TJ and the Pandas

It's been awhile since we've posted anything, but this weekend was the first time in a couple weeks that we did anything exciting.

At this point in our DC trip, we're trying to cram in all the sights we haven't been to yet. Our agenda for this weekend was the Jefferson Memorial, the National Zoo, and the National Air and Space Museum.

Early Saturday morning we headed out to see the Jefferson Memorial. I was kind of excited to see it because I had read in a couple places that was a very beautiful memorial.

The Thomas Jefferson Memorial is kind of tucked away from the other memorials, sitting between the Tidal Basin and the Potomac River.

Its a really big memorial. Very reminescent of the Pantheon and a lot of Roman architecture, which Jefferson (who I'm going to call TJ) was a big fan of.

TJ standing tall.
Since we got to the memorial so early , there were a lot of interesting shadows being cast across all the columns.

Interesting shot of the Washington Monument reflected in the Tidal Basin. Look at the ducks!

We saw in our guidebook that the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial was on our way back, so we thought we'd stop and have a look. It turned out to be a nice memorial with a lot of fountains for some reason.

FDR and his dog, which looks like a Scottie dog.

McKinsey is apparently channeling E.T. to connect with FDR.

Me and my buddy, Roosey. That's what I call him.

We were on our way back to downtown when we came across a WWI memorial tucked away in the trees. It almost looks like a ruin.

While we were in the area, we stopped by the Korean War Memorial. It had these interesting statues of soliders walking through the bush.

And it also had a stone wall similar to the Vietnam Memorial, except this one had images carved into it instead of names.

After we had some lunch and saw The Dark Knight, we took the metro up to the National Zoo. We got there around 6:00, knowing that the zoo closed at 8:00. After we got in, we discovered that all the indoor exhibits and gift shops had already closed for the day!

Luckily, we were able to sneak in to the panda exhibit before they locked the doors. The pandas are the main reason we went to the zoo anyway. Not many places you can see them in the U.S. And just look how cute they are!

This isn't a dead panda, just a sleeping one. I think.

This video shows one of the pandas kickin' back and munching away on some bamboo. It was really tearing into that stuff.


We also saw a cheetah...

... and a gator. That's about it.

Our last excursion for the weekend was the National Air and Space Museum. We weren't super excited for this museum but we figured we were here, so why not. There sure were a lot of excited little boys running around though.

The plane that the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. That's one thing about this museum, it was hard to tell if the planes and satellites were the real ones or just copies.

The Nazi's V-2 rocket from WWII.


I thought this was interesting. Apparently in the early days of air travel, you could buy airline trip insurance from vending machines. Seems reassuring...

The spacesuit that John Glenn wore into space.

The Apollo 11 suit that Buzz Aldrin wore on the moon. The dirt from the knees down is actually moon dust. Sure makes Glenn's suit seem pretty flimsy.

Charlie Lindbergh's famous Spirit of St. Louis.

And finally, as we left, we saw Sputnik, the first manmade object to be shot into space.