A whirlwind tour...

Okay, so probably not a whirlwind tour. But at least I'm finally getting some pictures up. And just so you know, if you want to see some of the pictures better, you should be able to click on them and they will open larger.

Here's me and my mom (okay, duh) standing at the front of the Capitol building facing the National Mall. I think you can make out the Washington Monument in the distance. I'm not sure why it won't show up very well. My mom's really bundled up because it was FREEZING that day.

















We went to the National Cathedral. On the left is a picture of some of the stained glass. See the bottom of my post for more pictures. On the right is the pulpit. It's unbelievably elaborate and rather large. I should have had either of my parents stand beside it to give you some perspective. Needless to say, it went above my head. Hopefully you can make out the vaulted ceilings in the background of the picture.






And back to the Capitol building. This is inside the Rotunda. You can see the statues of various historical figures that stand guard along the perimeter. The large paintings (and they are enormous) depict various scenes in American history. The picture is small in my screen at the moment, so I cannot quite make out what this one is of. I hope you get a better idea when it's put up on the blog.


These are more pictures from inside the Capitol. We came to the Capitol around 9:15am that morning and waited in line for nearly an hour. The security was strict, of course, but apparently they had some trouble with their trained dogs and it delayed the rest of the tours.

On the left is a picture of the Rotunda. I think they said it weighed 7 million tons. Can you imagine building it? You can see on the right the detail along the edge. The series tells the history of the country, and I took the first and last pictures that they depicted. The right shows the landing of Christopher Columbus and the left is the first flight. Hurray for North Carolina representation! So the history traces from 1492 to 1903. (I remembered the date!) Anyway, I thought that was really cool.

On the bottom right is a close-up of the center of the dome. The mural was done in the style of Renaissance paintings, so there are a variety of angels surrounding George Washington. Apparently Washington was supposed to be buried in the Capitol building, but his tomb was not ready by the time he died. He was buried in Mount Vernon, I believe.


















At the risk of having a very disjointed post, here are some pictures of the National Cathedral again. I wanted you to have a good idea of how impressive the structure itself is. The stained glass window is shown to the left, and to the right is the Cathedral from the front.












Well I hope you enjoyed the images, as opposed to text! I don't want you all to bore of my writing, so I thought it was definitely time to post some pictures.