Day 4: Washington Monument & White House

On Tuesday, I woke up to find that my left eye was swollen! It looked like I'd been clocked in the face. Since he is not a violent person and I don't deal with pain well, we eliminated the possibility that Brian had secretly punched me in the face during the night. It turns out that I'd been bitten by a bug in the apartment the night before (I thought I had killed him before he bit me, but that was apparently not the case!)

I didn't take a picture immediately, so the Benadryl is already working here. You have to imagine much more puffiness. I could barely open my eye.
Unfortunately, I am trying to convince Brian that we should soon take a trip to the Amazon, and this incident did not help my case. I believe a direct quote was, "You can't even handle an apartment in DC and you want me to take you to the Amazon? You won't last a day!"

We didn't let this get us down as we had two items scheduled in advance: a ticket to go up to the top of the Washington Monument, and a White House tour.

For the Washington Monument, you don't need to order tickets in advance. They distribute free, same-day tickets at the monument. However, these tickets apparently are quite popular and you might not be able to get one, or may get a time that is inconvenient. For a small processing fee, you can order tickets in advance and be sure to go up when it works for your schedule.

We were set to go in the first group of the day, at 9 am.

We left our apartment a bit early, so we got off a couple of metro stops early so we enjoy the early-morning beauty of Washington DC. Approaching the monument...
Even though we had a ticket for 9 am, we didn't get in until closer to 9:30, due to elevator limitations. Here we are, waiting for the elevator, near a statue of Washington.
And the view from one side:
I don't have many pictures from the rest of the day because of our White House tour. Before our tour, we got a list of restrictions. I no longer have it, but among the items not allowed are cameras, chapstick (!), and purses. Also, they provide no lockers or anything to keep your items during the tour. I kept a chapstick in my pocket and just didn't use it while in the White House. I was not arrested.

Because we wanted to take pictures at the Washington Monument, we brought our camera with us and then deposited it in the lockers at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum.

I really hope I don't sound too negative, but I was not impressed with the White House tour. There are very few rooms open to the public, and you walk through them with a little brochure giving you information about the rooms. They say to plan about 40 minutes, but we were out in 15. Perhaps Europe and its grand chateaux has spoiled us.

After, we ate a quick lunch and decided to go to the National Geographic Museum at Explorers Hall. We weren't allowed to bring our map with us to the White House tour, but we saw a sign pointing us towards that direction, so we decided on the spur-of-the-moment to go. About 90 minutes of walking in the heat later, we realized that we either missed a sign or the sign was missing, because we were lost. We got a bottle of water and, when it was finished (no food or drinks allowed on the train!) we hopped a metro back to the Hirshhorn.

We picked up our bag and camera, and continued to tour the museum. We really like modern art installations. Once again, extremely helpful volunteers approached us and discussed several of the pieces with us.

This was commissioned for the museum's grand opening:In this exhibit, the screens in each state showed scenes from that state. Georgia mostly showed film from the 1996 Olympics. Idaho showed nothing but potatoes!We were in the mood for pizza, and so we went for dinner at a place that's right by the mall: Ella's Wood Fired Pizza. That's it on the right-hand side, although we ate inside. We had a delightful dinner.Then we returned home, exhausted yet again.