A Travelblog

I love to travel, but good grief, it's exhausting. This is my big Washington, DC/St.Louis tip, and I'm now on the second half, so I'm tired, and the next few days are going to be even more tiring. A good thing: I'm sitting at a St. Louis Bread Co. using their free WiFi, and I just finished eating a Turkey Bacon Bravo sandwich (my favorite!). I LOVE St. Louis Bread/Panera Bread! I wish we had one in Austin.
So, Washington, DC...very cool city. I'd love to live there. I'd have an apartment downtown, and I'd walk to work every day at the Library of Congress. And I'd shop in Georgetown, and in the evenings, I'd sit on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and read or write, or just watch all the people walking by.
Here's all the places we saw:
the Lincoln Memorial
the Washington Memorial
the Vietnam War Memorial (so powerful!)
the Korean War Memorial (also powerful)
the World War II Memorial (not as powerful, but beautiful)
the White House (just walked by & saw from a distance)
the Library of Congress (I wanted to lay down on the floor in the middle of the main entrance hall and just stare at the mosaic ceiling...it was beautiful! We didn't go into any of the reading rooms, which was probably good because Kristi would never have been able to get me out, but we did see several of their exhibits...I seriously want a job there.)
the National Gallery of Art
the National Archives (saw the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights...very cool stuff)
and the National Cathedral. Which was probably one of the strangest buildings I've ever been in. It was beautiful and impressive, but why do we even have a National Cathedral? Most of the statues, instead of being of religious figures, were of important people in American history. There was a giant statue of George Washington & another of Abraham Lincoln. And the stained glass showed as many (if not more) scenes from American history as it showed religious scenes. It struck me that it was built to glorify America rather than God. Very, very strange.
We also walked by a bajillion buildings like the Capitol Building, the Department of Justice, the FBI building, the IRS building, etc., but didn't go in any of them.
I'd love to go back and do more exploring when I have more time and don't have to spend most of the daytime hours in a conference.
And now I'm in St. Louis, trying to pass some time until I can check into my room at the seminary for the youth conference I'm participating in. This is my third year helping with this conference, and the schedule hasn't changed a bit, so I know exactly what I'll see: the Synod's International Center (woohoo), the St. Louis Zoo, and the Arch.
Home again on Tuesday.