Okay, so there are SEVERAL things I miss about living in Europe, but one thing I miss terribly is using the trains, busses, & subways. Public transportation is wonderful. I don't know why people are so scared of it! It's the ONLY way to go when you're in a big city & Washington DC was no exception. We were THRILLED to be on a subway system again.
This was Craiger's first time on a subway
(& probably the first time Bladen will ever REMEMBER being on a subway.)
& he loved it. He was so happy to be on a REAL train.
We took the subway to the Archive stop in front of the National Archives. The kids enjoyed running around the Navy Memorial while we waited for the Archives to open at 9 am.
Well, 9:00 came & we walked into the archives & got chased down by a security guard. I guess we entered the normal "work" entrance which opens at 9 am, but we didn't work there so we got in trouble. ha ha ha. As tourists, we were supposed to enter the Archives on the opposite side of the building & that portion didn't open until 10:00. BOO!!! We weren't happy about that one.
So we had to find something to do for an hour while we waited. We got lucky & happened upon Ford's Theater
(just a few blocks from the Archives. . . just around the FBI building which we thought was pretty cool too.)
This was the actual theater that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in. We were pretty excited to get to tour that before we hit the National Archives. There was no line & we literally just walked right in.
The actual theater was beautiful. It was really neat to sit there & know the history of what happened there.
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| Bladen was my buddy for the theater tour. |
The booth that President Abraham Lincoln was shot in is still there, completely unchanged from the time he died. Nobody has used it since he did & it stays as a memorial to him. It's beautiful!
After exploring the theater, we headed back to the National Archives right at 10:00 so we could avoid the inevitable line that develops early on there. This is the place everyone wants to see when visiting Washington DC so we wanted to get there first before everyone else hit it. We got lucky & only had about 25 people before us in line.
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| Mimi & her little buddies. |
It was amazing. You can't take pictures inside the building for obvious reasons. But I can't even begin to tell you how amazing it was to stand in front of the most important documents in our nation's history:
The Declaration of Independence
The Constitution
The Bill of Rights
I'm SO happy I got to see them in person. They are barely readable these days due to age. But it was amazing looking at the signatures of our founding fathers on a single piece of paper knowing that that single piece of paper gave us the liberty & freedom we celebrate today. It was an almost spiritual experience. I'm SO happy I had that opportunity, & I'm happy I was able to give that opportunity to my children as well.
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