Spring Break recap - day 1 Friday

Warning - I took my camera with me to DC and hauled it every day. I took my everday lens (18-70mm) and a smaller lens (50mm f/1.8) for inside the museums. With the crowds, I never really used the 50mm - not enough room. But these posts will be picture heavy..

Note: I wanted to post all 5 days at once...but i can't seem to get the images uploaded very fast. So I will post the days as I get them finished....


So we drove to DC on Friday (before easter) on a cloudy overcast day. We arrived at the hotel in Arlington around 3pm, unloaded the car and headed out to explore. By this time, the skies had cleared a bit and it was the warmest weather we would have - about 70 with partly cloudy skies.

We walked a few blocks from the hotel to the Iwo Jima Memorial then over to Arlington Nat. Cemetary. We visited Kennedy's grave and saw the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown. We walked around Lee Mansion and then returned to the hotel for an early evening.

Our goal was to have an economical trip - eat dinners in the hotel room (we had a nice little kitchen), lunches out and see all the free stuff we could. So it was home for dinner at the hotel, not dinner out on the town!

The Iwo Jima Memorial - just a few blocks away from our hotel.




Gravesite of JFK with Jackie and 2 of their children.


As we were leaving JFK's gravesite, I saw these cherry trees still in bloom with all the graves behind them - one of my favorite shots of the trip...



Right before the changing of the guard. It was crowded with real flat light and hard to get a good picture.




Heading back to the hotel, the sun was lowering in the sky and lit up the Washington monument with these tulips in the front - it was gorgeous. You can barely see the Capital behind the Wash monument because the sun was too low in the sky to hit it.