DC Trip Day 7

Today is the day that we went to Arlington. We spent quite a bit of time out there just walking around and taking it all in. We started out by looking at the Kennedy Graves. It was a very large slab with a single flame and four plaques. It was neat, mostly because it was a President of the United States. Then we headed down to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. While we were there we were actually able to see the changing of the guard. That was really neat. It was so perfect and clean and precise.

Changing of the Guard

After the changing of the guard, we walked around some more and saw a huge amphitheater where they hold various things like for the funerals of the unknown soldiers. Across from the amphitheater, was the mast from the USS Maine along with a small memorial there. Next to that were rows and rows of tombstones. They stretched in all directions as far as the eye could see. Some had names, some didn't, some just said "four unknown". It was crazy to see how many unknown headstones there were.

We kept walking around and came across Robert E. Lee's house. It was a beautiful plantation house and was quite large for its time. The house also had some great views, but it was sad to see that he and his family were "forced" out of their home during the civil war. On the property also lies a huge tomb of 2111 unknown soldiers that President Lincoln buried there in the middle of the night (which is actually how Arlington became a cemetery).

The tomb of the 2111 unknown

We continued to walk through the cemetery and came across the grave of the first person to ever be buried there. The date said that it was from the 1700s! Then we walked to the Iwo Jima statue. I was expecting it to be some smaller statue but it turned out to be huge!

Iwo Jima Statue

After our visit through Arlington, we hopped back on the metro and went back into DC. We thought it would be fun to visit Chesapeake Bay so we headed that way. We came up to the huge fish market and we really wanted to get something, but then we quickly realized that we had no way to cook it back at the B&B so we decided against that.

We wondered for a little bit more and then went back to the B&B. We were just in time for another evening snack. Tonight it was taquitos and cookies! We were still hungry after our snack and we kept thinking about the delicious dinner at Lauriol's the night before so we went back there for dinner again.

After delicious dinner number two, we came back to our room and watched Back to the Future parts 2 and 3. I forgot all about those movies, but it was a fun night just hanging out in our room.