The 10K walking tour of DC

My cousin Amy and my childhood, actually teen-hood (that's my made-up word of the day) friend Natalie were here this past weekend.  We had a great time together!  We are all living in different cities and are in different places in our lives now but when we are together, it's like things have never changed from our younger days.  There's no drama and there are always lots of pictures taken. Neither Amy nor Natalie had been to DC before so I thought the most important thing for them to see would be the big, famous places first.  They can visit museums next time they are here! All of the pictures in this post are from 1 day of serious walking.  DC has a decent metro system that is really clean and generally on time, but when it comes to doing things around the downtown area, it's almost better to walk, especially on the weekends and holidays in the summer.  There  are many more people trying to get on and off fewer trains throughout the day. So, with all that said, we started our day at Eastern Market and walked from there...more than 6 miles.  Here was our day:

Beautiful flowers at the indoor part of eastern market

Escaping the heat in a firetrap bookstore just off eastern market.   Like my cow book?  That's actually how I felt the following day after the cupcake pigout, i mean cowout.  

Supreme Court...

And capitol.  Natalie said it is much more beautiful in person than in pictures. I agree.

We decided to give the self-photography a try at the Washington Monument.  Aren't my 'tar-bans' (target ray-bans :) great?  Ed hates them.

Freedom wall at the WW2 memorial..each star represents 100 American service personnel who were killed during WW2.

Amy and Natalie taking a break at the Korean War Memorial.

One of our few successful pictures taken by strangers. Abe's head was not cut off and the guy taking the picture took it in under 30 seconds.  Bravo picture taker.

I have always wanted to visit this statue of Einstein near the National Academy of Sciences. Since we were on foot, and nearby, I thought that we should stop by. It is so big and it's neat because it is a sculpture that you can actually touch in DC so people were crawling all over it when we first arrived. 

DAR headquarters.  Heather and I were here before but I never had a chance to have my picture here.  

 Amy and Natalie at the White House. We had another stranger attempt to take a picture of the 3 of us here....she tried so hard..but could never get a good shot, even after taking 5 pictures.  

Ahh, at last. We reached the metro station to head home after a long, long day of walking!