Sonya's Blog - Day 151 - Old Town Alexandria and the Washington Memorials

Sonya’s Blog - Day 151 - November 20th - Old Town Alexandria and the Washington Memorials

We wanted to do one walking day around to all the sites in Washington around the Washington Mall area. Blake also wanted to visit the colonial town of Alexandria. We were going to drive because we wanted to take Kizmet and she is not allowed on the subway train. Traffic can be really bad on the expressways heading into Washington and area, so we were not in a big hurry to get out the door just to sit in traffic. Even at 9 AM when we are going to the train, the traffic is still very backed up on the expressway. We left a little after 10 and the traffic was still very congested, which was crazy.

Lunch at the Riverfront in Alexandria:

We finally arrived in Alexandria (which is in Virginia and just across the river from DC) and found some parking. We had two hours on the meter to walk around and explore the area. We walked down to the Potomoc River to explore. There were some information panels that talked about the town. I learned that Alexandria was the headquarters for the slave trade (not really selling the town for me there). It is George Washington’s hometown and was also the childhood home of Robert E. Lee, Civil War General on the Confederate side. Now Lincoln tried to get Lee to fight for the Union Army, but then Virginia seceded and he fought for the Confederates. It may have been a whole different war if he was on the Union side. Alexandria was occupied by Union forces at the onset of the Civil War, which makes sense since it is right across the river from Washington, D.C. Probably a wise move. It is a quaint little town with cobblestone streets and a market square, too bad about it’s nasty history of selling human beings for slavery and fighting to keep the right to do so. We walked around for a bit and saw some of the sights. They had a lot of cobblestone streets and old buildings.

Gadsbys Tavern is an US National Historic Landmark. There were different taverns on this sight and famous people from the past visited like: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. On the corner fo the street is an icehouse that was built in 1793. They have a plaque on the street commemorating where the hatch was and then you can go around and see down below where the ice was stored. They would cut the ice from the Potomoc River and the icehouse stored enough ice for the whole town. The pictures show the storage area and the plaque.

We decided to move onto Washington and explore the Washington Mall area and all the Memorials. We parked at the Jefferson Memorial and started walking from there. The Jefferson Memorial is just as grandiose as the Lincoln Memorial except that it is round instead of square. We wandered around the memorial and got lots of pictures. Kizmet seemed to enjoy it, later we found out that she is not allowed on the Memorials (all the other one’s had signs, but we didn’t see one for this memorial from where we came from). The only sign we saw was that dogs had to be leashed. Ooops. (The picture is of us at the Jefferson Memorial). We then started on our walk to the White House which was about 2 1/2 KM’s away. We had to walk by the Washington Monument, so we snapped another picture. It is just a large obelisk. I think you can travel to the top and get a great view of Washington, but we didn’t want to do that.

Off to the White House. As it turns out, you cannot walk around the whole White House. You can walk along the walkway that borders the South Lawn (along Pennsylvania Avenue), but both streets that border the west and east side were blocked off. Not sure about the North side, we didn’t try. If we could have walked along the east and west side we probably would have done the whole loop, but oh well. It is hard to get good pictures because the house is so far back from the street, but we got some.

Blake and I infront of the White House:

Our next stop was the Vietnam War Memorial, which is right beside the Lincoln Memorial. This is the famous wall that has all the names of the soldiers that lost their lives in Vietnam. There is a trio of statues that look towards the wall that represent the different branches of the army that took part in the war. It is pretty sad to walk along the wall and see all the names. They are listed on the wall according to when they were killed, not alphabetically. There are large books listing all the names alphabetically that tell you which panel to look on and which line number if you are looking for a particular name.

We then walked in front of the Lincoln Memorial and went to the Korean Memorial. It was getting dark by this time, so my pictures are not very good. This Memorial is quite unique. It shows a squad on patrol walking through rugged terrain. The soldiers are in full combat gear and represent the different branches of the armed forces. There is also a Pool of Remembrance and a Mural Wall.

It was time to head back to the truck as it was getting very dark. On the walk back we were going to pass two more Memorials; Martin Luther King Jr. and Franklin D. Roosevelt. First we came upon the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. He is depicted as coming out of the mountain and there is a wall behind him with many of his quotes. We couldn’t stay long to explore it fully as is it was really dark by now and we still had about 1 KM to walk back to the truck. We then came upon the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial. This is a really large Memorial that spans a large area. They have made it into a park like setting with various statues and quotes. It was not very well lit up, however, so it was difficult to see in it’s entirety. We made it back to the truck without getting mugged (Blake was very concerned about this possibility because there were not many people around and it was very dark)! Thank goodness for that.

It took about 45 minutes to get back to the campsite and we were all tired. We still needed to make supper and prep lunches for tomorrow. We all chipped in and got it done.

Sonya