Today was absolutely gorgeous, and we took advantage of the weather by visiting
Mount Vernon- George Washington's home on the Potomac River. With over 500 acres (he once had 8,000!), it's really a nice place to visit. Note to those using a GPS to find it- get the coordinates, since the street address is not recognized and shows some funky place. And actually on our way to Mount Vernon, we saw an LV sticker on a car, and it turned out to be someone that Chunk knew. However, said Latvian did not see us and turned before we could get his attention. (And of course, as mentioned in the previous entry, we met an LV family too!)
To start off the tour of the grounds we took a 40-minute sightseeing cruise of the Potomac that left from the wharf just below the mansion. Absolutely awesome, and at just $9 extra, it was well worth it.
We then stopped by Washington's tomb (which also includes 25 family members), and the slave memorial, and then walked up to wait in the hour long line to get into the mansion. It was such a nice day that we didn't mine waiting, and the people around us kept us entertained. The mansion itself has more bedrooms than anything else, and is kept as it was in 1799 when Washington passed away. Most of the rooms are painted bright blue and green, a stylish and expensive decor choice back then. One third of the furniture, and half of the paintings are the original pieces that were there when Washington lived there. They're still working on finding everything, which is pretty awesome.
There's even a
key to the Bastille that was given to Washington by the Marquis de Lafayette. We also stood in the room where they celebrated Washington becoming president, and saw the bedroom where he died. While we were excited to see all of this history, we did notice an unappreciative teen who was with his grandparents, and continuously was texting on his phone while inside the mansion. Interesting, since the two girls in front of us, maybe 10 and 7, really enjoyed it). *Side note: They even have Mount Vernon SPs- with a Gator and light green shirts! (see photo below)
So after spending most of the day there, we hurried to the
Udvar-Hazy Center (the addition to the Air and Space Museum). Tons of planes, space transportation, and other flight apparatuses, the Center was even featured in
Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. There's even a first generation
Optimus Prime Transformers figure in a case at the Center, along with an original script from the second movie and a plate from the plane used in the movie with the Decepticon logo. Chunk's favorite plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, was even there and he was like a kid in a candy shop walking around seeing planes that he recognized. We also saw the
Enola Gay, the
Concorde, and the
Space Shuttle Enterprise (huge!).
So go and have and adventure, and don't forget your camera!
