Wednesday 24 October 2012

Washington - 24th October 2012




We had a very leisurely start to the day today – and had breakfast in a little café just down the road from the hotel. We put $5 each on a metro ticket, and got the blue line towards Franconia to Arlington Cemetery. It was a beautiful day again, really warm. Coming up from the metro, the cemetery was about a four hundred yard walk. One end of the road is the Women in the Military Memorial, and a mile or so the other end, over the Arlington Memorial Bridge, is the imposing Lincoln Monument.


We only had an hour or so here – we had a Pentagon Tour booked for 2pm. The tour that they offer in the cemetery on a little bus takes just over an hour, with stops, so we elected to walk to the Kennedy Burial Site and then come back for the tour after the Pentagon. The trees in the cemetery were so colourful – this must be one of the prettiest times of the year to come here. The browns and oranges were so vivid. We walked the twenty or so minutes to where the eternal flame still burns – and has done since Jacqueline Kennedy lit it when her husband, JFK, was buried. She is now buried there with him, as well as two of their children that died within a few days of birth.

The rows and rows of gravestones are all in straight lines – very military fashion. No flowers on any though – although the ones we had passed were mostly from World War II so they may not have had many surviving relatives. We headed back to the metro, and had to put another $5 on the card – apparently paper cards have a $1 per trip surcharge. If you are here for a few days and are going to use the metro it is worth buying a Smart Card. We only had one stop to go for the Pentagon – it said to report 30 minutes prior to the tour, and we were duly there ten minutes before that. Security was similar to that of airports, and we got in in about five minutes flat. So, we had to wait for over half an hour. It is such a busy place – so many people coming and going. There are over 23,000 people that work in this building – it is massive. The US Department of Defence is housed in this building, which incredibly took only 16 months to build during World War II.

I don’t know what I expected, but what I saw wasn’t it! We had a security briefing from a young group of lads that represented all of the armed forces – one marine, one army, one navy and one coastguard. Each of them took a group of us – there must have been about 50 people on the tour, mostly British would you believe from a college in Brighton! We started off through a shopping mall. There is everything here that anyone could want to buy – because of the amount of people that work here and the security they have to go through to get in and out, it is easier for them to have everything they need inside. They even have a bank and a DMV(driving license office, where the wait is nowhere near what it would be in a general one!).

The five sided building has five rings – a small one on the inside going out to the biggest on the outside. There are five floors, and over twelve miles of corridors. We walked some of the corridors, which were very clinical and clean. The walls were decorated with various themes, from a wall for General MacArthur to walls with quilts that were donated from all over the world after the 9/11 attack. There are elevators up and down, and a park area in the middle where rank is not recognised. As this is a military establishment, and approximately 12,000 officers stationed here, a lower ranked person would be forever saluting so the middle has been made a neutral area. There used to be a hot dog tent in the middle that the Russians had eyes on and thought it was the entrance to an underground bunker. Probably is!

We then went into the area that the plane had hit in the 9/11 attack. A room had been decorated as a memorial to the 184 people that lost their lives on that day – 59 from the plane and 124 who were working in the Pentagon. It hit the building at over 500 miles per hour, but apparently hit the ground first before bumping into the building so this may have been one of the reasons why so few lives were lost. It does look quite sturdy! When we got back to where we had started, we had walked over a mile and a half. No pictures at all were allowed to be taken on either the inside or the outside – paranoia considering we hadn’t seen anything of importance!

We made our way out of the building, and then walked around to the back of the building where an outdoor memorial has been built. It is a beautiful area – each person has a bench with their name on, with water running underneath it and reflecting off it. All people are in age order, and depending if they were on the plane or in the building depends on which way the bench is pointed. All of the benches are laid in the direct path that the aircraft was pointed when it hit. There are many trees also planted here – a very sad but lovely place.

It was so hot now – we walked back round to the front and got on the blue line again and went back to Arlington Cemetery to finish the tour. We bought the tickets ($8.75 each) and got on one of the little trolly buses that left every twenty minutes. The first stop was the Kennedy site. The guide did tell us that there are 26-31 funerals every day here, and they will reach capacity by 2037. The older graves have all sorts of different headstones, but since 1947 they have only been the same uniform headstone. There are two presidents buried here – JFK and Taft. Never heard of him! With every grave, there are up to three people in it. The military person, and a spouse or dependent if they so wish. 285,000 plots so far I think – times by three. That is a lot of bodies! We then went to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where some sort of ceremony was going on with school children and wreaths and a bugler or two. We walked round the amphitheatre – not sure what they use that for, and then back to the bus. This chap used a tape to give information – not a patch on the one before that knew everything and some. We reached the point where we had started, and felt we had had enough of the Cemetery – beautiful as it was. No idea how they fit in five funerals an hour here – it would need to be military fashion I think.

We then decided to finish the afternoon by walking over the Arlington Memorial Bridge to the Lincoln Monument. It was further than it looked! The walk was very pleasant, but feet and body were struggling to keep co-ordinated. Cyclists share the sidewalk with walkers, and you have to be on your toes to hear them coming and avoid them. We eventually reached the monument just as the sun was going down. When it shone on the white marble it looked stunning. We walked round to the front of this Greek inspired temple, and looked up the steps to see Abraham sitting regally in his chair. The steps were full of people – sitting, standing and going up and down. This really is one of the icons of Washington. Whether it is Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, or just one of those scenes from umpteen movies, everybody knows this. Looking back to the Washington Monument from the top of the steps, the reflecting pool does exactly that – reflects everything. The suns last rays were catching the trees and the pool was full of reflections. Looked good – but apparently it is a 2000 feet vat of duck poo!

We decided to grab a cab back to the hotel – just in time for Happy Hour. Didn’t even know there was one until the drinks were lined up. We chatted to a chap from Ohio who thought his vote was going to be the one that decided who the president was going to be, and a local who gave us some ideas for dinner. We took one of them, and went to the Taj of India. It was indeed a good choice – and very good value for money. Will have to try another one tomorrow!



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