Part Two

Ok, here's the second half of the pictures. And the story. Jason had told me about a really great view in Arlington and we definitely found it!! Isn't that amazing? The three big monuments all in one beautiful picture. The view is near the Netherlands Carrillon, which is a huge and rather ugly, bell tower apparently gifted to the USA by the Netherlands in honor of 50 years of friendship. But at least it marks a really cool view!!

The Iwo Jima Memorial is one that I had never been to before and it was certainly a new experience. The memorial is HUGE but yet the detail in the sculpture is something else altogether. It definitely looks like the picture you see of it. It was was a good experience, quite moving and in a fantastic setting.

From the Iwo Jima Memorial we snuck in the side entrance of Arlington National Cemetary. The side entrance was really nice because it didn't have many people and there were more trees. It really felt like a cemetary instead of a tourist attraction.

There was a memorial in the far corner for those who had been killed at the Pentagon on September 11th. You could see the Pentagon in the background and the black marble memorial was moving, but I thought this grave of one of the victims, said it best. Many of the victims were buried there, though I don't believe all of them were.

We were able to see the changing of the guard as well. It started raining right before it began and stopped raining just after it finished. How fitting.

After our tour I headed in towards town to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Open House Festival. They offer tons of free performances and workshops. This year's theme was "Arts Along the Gulf Coast Highway". They had groups from the Gulf Coast and it was pretty cool. They also had a few of the Kennedy Center's usual groups. I was able to see the Suzanne Farrell Ballet perform three amazing numbers!!! I was about 30 feet from the stage dead center. I'm not quite sure how I got that lucky, but I could tell you the eye color of every dancer on that stage. That's how close I was. It was amazing!! Floating around the festival was the Target Dog... so how could I pass up an opportunity to get my picture with him!?

The Kennedy Center runs a free shuttle from the Metro to the Center and on the way there I met some new friends. On the far left is Daniel. He just graduated from the graduate school at George Washington University. Now he lives in Pentagon City down in Arlington and works as a contractor for the Armed Forces Health Service sector. He was really interesting to talk to and had great advice. Pam and Dylan (her son) live in Southern Arlington but are orginally from Louisiana, so they had actually heard of some of the acts that were there today. It was great to have some people to hang out with all day. And new friends are always fun.

The Kennedy Center is AMAZING. So many stages and all of them are impeccable and the acoustics are perfect in every hall. There were an unbelieveable number of people there. Daniel, who visits a lot, said he had never seen so many people there ever!

So it was quite a weekend. Tomorrow is the mall (I need a few things), the Fiesta at the National Zoo, and I'm gonna take myself out to see Little Miss Sunshine. I'll try and post some Fiesta pictures tomorrow.