Washington,  D.C. 8/11 -- 8/14, 2012 [Washington DC Gallery] [Back to Photo Page] [Slideshow]

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia, is the capital of the United States.  Named in honor of George Washington, the City of Washington was founded in 1791 to serve as the new national capital.  The centers of all three branches of the federal government of the United States are in the District, including the Congress, President, and Supreme Court. Washington is home to many national monuments and museums, which are primarily situated on or around the National Mall, a large, open park in downtown Washington between the Lincoln Memorial and the United States Capitol.

Getting there ...

The main reason for this trip was because Iris was going to represent the Silicon Valley Chinese School to participate the Northern American Chinese Culture Competition in Washington DC .  Iris and Woanyu has flown with her teammates to DC on Thursday (8/9) since the competition was on Saturday (8/11).  Linus and I took a red-eye flight on Friday night (11PM on 8/10) and arrived in Baltimore on  Saturday early morning.  Although we got an upgrade to the 1st class, I did not sleep too well on the airplane.  Linus was still very sleepy when we got our rental car and fell asleep many times while I was asking for driving directions, so we made a few wrong turns on the way.

The First Day ...

• Arlington National Cemetery
  I decided to make a quick tour to the Iwo Jima Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery as my first stop in Washington DC.
  Situated in Arlington County, Virginia - just outside of Washington, DC, Arlington National Cemetery is a large military cemetery established during the Civil War on the estate of the family of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.  In an area of 624 acres (253 ha), veterans and military casualties from each of the nation's wars are interred in the cemetery, ranging from the American Civil War through to the military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

• Twin Oaks Estate
  After the Chinese Culture Competition (Iris' team was the 5th place out of 7 teams, and Iris and her teammates were so sad after the competition....), all the teams were invited to visit the Twin Oaks Estate in DC, which was home to nine ROC Ambassadors between 1937 and 1978, and still belongs to the ROC government in Taiwan.  The 26 room mansion and the 18.1 acres of land comprise the Twin Oaks Estate.  In 1888, Mr. Gardiner Green Hubbard (founder and first president of the National Geographic Society) acquired the property and then commissioned one of America's leading architects at the time, the Paris-trained Richard Allen to build a summer retreat.  On June 8, 1937, the family rented the house to the new ambassador from the Republic of China, Thomas C. T. Wang,  the representative of the Chiang Kai-shek government in Nanking.  In 1947, the Hubbard family sold Twin Oaks for $450,000 to the Republic of China represented by Ambassador Wellington Koo. 
  Perhaps the most interesting story of all involves the sale of Twin Oaks on Dec. 22, 1978 to an American civic organization. Just seven days earlier, President Carter had unexpectedly announced that the United States would, on Jan. 1, shift diplomatic recognition from the ROC government on Taiwan to the PRC.  Fearing that the PRC would claim ownership of all its assets in the United States, the government in Taiwan asked help to arrange for the sale of the Twin Oaks estate to a private American group, the Friends of Free China Association, co-chaired by Senator Barry Goldwater.
  Later, the ROC government in Taiwan bought the Twin Oaks estate back from the Friends of Free China after the Taiwan Relations Act was passed by the US Congress in 1979.

The Second Day ...

• National Cathedral
  The National Cathedral, officially known as the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, is 301ft (92m) high and 517ft long. The construction started in 1907 but was interrupted during the First and Second World Wars, and the construction halted again in 1977 when the foundation ran out of money.  Finally, in September 1990, 83 years after construction started, the last stone was put in place.

• Washington Monument & WWII Memorial
  The Washington Monument is a 555ft/169m tall obelisk built between 1848 and 1884 in honor of the first President of the United States, George Washington. It is the tallest free standing masonry structure in the world.  Construction of the monument was halted in 1858 due to the Civil War and did not resume until 1879.  The point at which construction was halted in 1858 is still visible as a different quarry was used after the resumption of the work. The stones above 152ft have a darker tone of color than the original ones.

• National Air & Space Museum
  The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum has the largest collection of historic air and spacecraft in the world.  The collection includes more than 30,000 aviation-related and more than 9,000 space related artifacts.  Some of the most notable include the Wright 1903 Flyer, the first engine-powered airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, the plane used by Charles Lindbergh on the first transatlantic flight in 1927 and the Apollo 11 Command Module.  There are also my other favorites:  X-1, X-15, Bf-109, Me-262, P-51, Zero, XP-80, X-45 (UAV), V-1, V-2, U-2, F-104, ..... (the list will go on for a while).
  We also took a flight simulator ride.  Since Woanyu did not want to take it (but it is a 2-people ride), I took it twice: once with Linus and once with Iris :-)  The flight simulator was very interactive that one person (pilot) can control the flight and the other one can shoot the enemy.  Linus was so aggressive in flying that we were upside down most of the time.

• National Gallery of Art
  Opened in 1941 as an art gallery "for the nation", Washington D.C.'s National Gallery of Art boasts one of the country's largest collections of Western art and sculpture.

• Lincoln Memorial & Washington Monument at Night
   

The Third Day ...

• Sunrise at Lincoln Memorial
   

• Capitol
  The US Capitol houses the legislative branch of the American government. The Senate occupies the building's north wing and the House of representatives is housed in the south wing.  Begun in 1793, the Capitol building has been built, burnt, rebuilt, extended, and restored; today, it stands as a monument to the American people and their government to house the meeting chambers of the Senate and the House of Representatives for over two centuries.
  One restriction is that tripods are not allowed on the Capitol ground even outdoors.  I could not set up my tripod even for my family pictures in front of the Capitol building.....

• Lincoln Memorial
  We walked from the Kennedy Center to the Lincoln Memorial.  The Lincoln Memorial in the form of a Greek Doric temple and contains a large seated sculpture of Abraham Lincoln and inscriptions of two well-known speeches by Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address.  On May 30, 1922, the memorial was presented to President Warren G. Harding, who accepted it on behalf of the American people to honor the Great Emancipator in the history.

• Jefferson Memorial
  Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third President of the United States.  The Jefferson Memorial was dedicated on April 13, 1943, the 200th anniversary of Jefferson's birth. The interior of the memorial includes a 19-foot (6 m) statue of Jefferson and engravings of passages from his writings.

The Last Day ...

• Sunrise at Jefferson Memorial
   

• White House
  The White House is located on a site near the Mall chosen in 1790 by president George Washington and Pierre l'Enfant, the architect who created the master plan for the new capital.  However, The White House has been the official residence of every President of the United States with the exception of George Washington.

• Ford's Theater
  This historic building was the site of President Lincoln's assassination in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth, an actor. For more than a century after the shooting, Ford's Theatre was not permitted to be used as a place of "public amusement" but rather was used for a variety of other purposes, including for War Dept. offices.  The building eventually sat empty from 1931 until 1965, when a few Congressmen began lobbying for its repair. Funds were allotted that year and in 1968, the theater once again reopened to the public.  Architecturally, especially on the outside, the building contains almost none of the features of the original theater, largely due to renovations that have taken place over the past century.  Today it is an active theater with an onsite museum. 

• National Museum of Natural History
  National Museum of Natural History is generally regarded as one of the finest museum of its kind in the world.   As a matter of fact, the National Museum of Natural History boasts one of the finest collections of gems and minerals in the world, including the 45.52 carat Hope Diamond.
  I went to the Butterfly Pavilion at about 2:30PM to get the free tickets (it is free every Tuesday).  After about 30 minutes in line, I got the tickets for the 3:15PM slot.  However, when I went to find my family, Iris was complaining she did not feel too well and had a stomach ache.  We just had a quick walk through the pavilion which is an enclosed tropical oasis with many live butterflies and exotic plants.  We did not spend too much time to stay in the museum so I did not even have the chance to go back to see the gems and mineral collections.

Going Home ...

We decided to leave the Museum of Natural History early because Iris did not feel well.  Iris threw up on the way walking back to the hotel (but she felt much better afterwards). We started to head toward Baltimore Airport (BWI) at 5PM.  Even there was some traffic on the highway, we got to the airport with plenty of time to have a dinner and  relax (plus our flight was delayed for almost an hour).   We finally got home after midnight to conclude our series of East Coast city tours (Toronto, New York, and Washington DC) for this summer.

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