Day 8: Cherry Blossom Parade, Spy Museum, Arlington, and Georgetown

We started the day off early with the Cherry Blossom Parade.  I was really excited about this.  Mark was not.  This is a big parade- an estimated 100,000 people show up for it.  I wanted to get there about 90 minutes early, but in typical Miller fashion we arrived about 30 minutes early.  This actually turned out great.  We found a good seat and watched as the hoards of people filed in:

 It was nuts.  The parade was pretty typical.  We got to see the bands from all the branches of the armed forces:

And some huge balloons:

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At one point, the parade stalled.  For a really long time.  This was a little over an hour into the parade.  We waited and waited, wondering what the heck was taking the next group so long to catch up.  They stalled and stalled.  Finally we decided we had had enough of the parade and left to get brunch. 

As we crossed the street we saw the reason for the hold up: A car that was in the parade had caught fire!  When we saw it, the hood was open and the flames were pretty small.  However, over the next few minutes the flames grew pretty large and chaos was beginning to happen.  People were running all over to take pictures.  Mark said “all the fire trucks are in the parade so they can’t put out this fire”!  Mark and I watched for a few minutes but didn’t stick around for all the action or the rest of the parade- I don’t even know if they finished.  I think they were about 2/3 of the way through at this point.  It was an eventful parade, but I felt sorry for all the people who had put hours of hard work into organizing it. 

We got brunch at a place called Austin’s Grill, a place we had happy hour at earlier this week.  Then we went a couple blocks over to the Spy Museum.

Most of the things to do in DC are free, and the Spy Museum is $18 per person.  We had heard it was cool so decided to give it a shot.  As you enter, you are escorted through a hallway and futuristic elevator while spy-music is playing.  Then you are put into an enclosed room and told that you have four minutes to memorize an identity.  I chose Sandra Miller; I was a 62-year-old living in Australia.  I was born in Illinois and headed to Austria.  I owned a clothing store and was in town for 10 days for business.  After our four minutes were up, some doors opened and we went into the main museum.  We learned spying tips and techniques and learned about how spying was used throughout history, notably in the mid/late 1900s Cold War.  We were quizzed about our identity at certain points and given a mission: mine was to meet a clothing store owner (I forgot her name- guess I wouldn’t make it as a spy).   My cover story was I wanted to learn about German fashions but my mission was to obtain a catalog with a secret document coded in it.  The very last room was about how spying can be used in modern day to hack into computer systems and possibly shut down electric plants.  It talked about the implications of this- no communication, no refrigeration, no water treatment, etc.  Scary stuff.  We were not allowed to take pictures in the museum, but here’s a picture of the outside:

We strolled another couple blocks over to Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was shot.  It is still a working theatre, but is open for tours when a show is not running.  When we visited a show was on stage so we did not spend much time here.  Still, it was very cool to be in a place where such a historic event happened.

There was a big street festival going on a bit down from the theatre, but we figured it was one of those that you have to pay to enter and then pay to do anything inside so we passed. 

Our next stop was Arlington Cemetery.  It is HUGE, but you can take a bus tour that stops at the major sites.  To be buried in Arlington, you have to had served your country.  Most of the graves are from service men and women, but there are also nurses, Supreme Court justices, etc.  There are currently 320,000 people buried here, and the cemetery is still active, burying people every day.  As we drove around, it was breathtaking to see all the grave markers.  The very old ones look like they’re from any standard cemetery, but the vast majority of them are small standard markers.  To see them all laid out you can’t help but think of all the people who have died for our country and to be thankful for the freedoms we enjoy because of them.  It seems like there are so many, but 320,000 is a very small percentage of the people who have died.

The first stop was where John F Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis are buried with their two very young babies.  This is a nice site that is marked with an eternal flame.

The next stop is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers.  This was very cool.  There have been many people who have died with their identities unknown, and this memorial honors all of them.  It is marked with a big white stone that says “Here Rests in Honored Glory An American Soldier Known But to God”.  It is guarded 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  The guard faces one direction for 21 seconds, turns another direction, does some stuff with his gun, faces this way for 21 seconds, takes 21 steps, and repeats it all.  (I think this would be the most boring job ever).  The 21 represents the 21 gun salute.  Every half hour the guard is changed and there is a very…ceremonial ceremony for that.  It was very neat to watch.  Due to the DNA testing we have these days, there will be no more unknown soldiers.

The final stop was the Arlington House.  This house is pure history.  George Washington’s step son inherited this house and wanted to build a memorial for Washington.  It served as his living residence for many years.  It was a typical plantation, but he and his wife paved the way to liberate their slaves.  In 1831 their only surviving child married Robert E. Lee, who was just starting his career with the Armed Forces.  They eventually got married in this house and raised their family here.  They left this house in 1861 to fight in the Civil War, and the house became a place where the Union troops protected the Capitol.  Shortly after this, it became government property and then the military cemetery that it is today. 

The house is currently going through some preservation so all of the furniture had been removed and some areas were closed off.  Even given this, it was still very cool to walk through this place and take in the beautiful views of Washington:

After Arlington we freshened up at the hotel and then set out to meet our friend Andrew Rhodes and his girlfriend Carly.  Mark and I met while joining a business fraternity, and Andrew was in the same pledge class that we were.  We used to hang out with him pretty regularly but have not seen him for years, so we were really excited when we found out he was living in DC and wanted to meet up. 

There’s a neighborhood in DC called Georgetown; the college of the same name is located here.  Andrew is in law school here and suggested a bar called The Tombs.  The Tombs is in the basement of an old 19^th century house and once counted Bill Clinton as one of its regulars.  We had a great time meeting his girlfriend, catching up about everything that’s happened over the past several years, and talking about our past and future travels.  It was really good to see Andrew again and to talk to someone other than each other!

On our walk back we passed a street that had a quiet zone:

After dinner, Andrew and Carly went home and we strolled through Georgetown.  The metro is not really convenient to Georgetown; we had to walk about a mile from the metro to the restaurant.  As we walked back, we came across a pizza bar called Pizza Paradiso.  We stopped here and had a few drinks.  It was a really neat place with a lot of unusual brews on tap. 

We left the pizza place and were walking back to the subway.  Georgetown is a happening place; it’s about what you would expect walking through a college place after midnight on a weekend.  We saw these guys in an alley and it looked like they were getting ready to fight.  Mark yelled “HEY!  What's going on back there”?  They came out of the alley and said “Nothing, mind your own business”!  Then later they yelled “Thank you”!  Dumb college boys.

Tonight was a really fun night.  Tomorrow is supposed to be very nice, about 70 degrees, and we don’t really have plans.  It will be fun to see where the day takes us!