22 Dec, Friday - Washington, full of history and culture

This is Philadephia Hyatt's hotel room. There are 3 of us in this tour package, garry, becky and me. Took some pictures of the outside view. I am sure glad that I made it to the hotel and have a good night of sleep on a BED. The hotel's lobby. This is a huge tour group. We also have to bring our luggages down as we will be changing hotels almost everyday due to the places we are going to. I seriously regretted bringing so many things from Singapore, especially winterwear. I didn't expect ourselves to acclimatized to the weather here. Arrgh. My luggage is super super heavy. It is sure irritating to lunge it everywhere.
Took some pictures near the hotel before boarding up the bus. We had to sit in allocated seats. Apparently, we will be rotated so as to be fair to the other tourists. This means that everyone will get a chance to sit near the driver, it just depends on which day. However, we shifted to the back of the bus when we realised that it is more spacious and less noisy. The group in front of us has a super noisy boy. Urrgh..

We alighted the bus and started the tour in Philadephia, Pennsylvania. Had to do some walking. Apparently most of the historical places are located in the same area.

Spent the morning at Philadelphia where we visited the Independence Hall and Liberty Bell. The Independence Hall is one of the most important historical landmarks in the United States. It's where the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776.
Apparently, the bell of the Independence Hall is cased in a glasshouse. It is called the Liberty bell and because it has cracks, they rather not hang it in Independence Hall. Took a picture with a policeman. Haha..

The picture below looks better when it is expanded. This is because there are 3 buildings along the road but my camera couldn't captured them in 1 go. The building map represent each building, Old City Hall, Independence Hall and Congress Hall. And there is duck's tour too. I always thought it was a Singapore thingy, but I was wrong, it is actually a franchise concept.

After which, we took a tour in the United States Mint where we saw how the coins and medals were produced. We couldn't take any photos and there was security checks. At the moment, the machines were making pennies. Haha.. What's so special about the pennies? I find them super irritating. Keep getting back all these small change.
We then walked around and had lunch before we left Philadelphia for Washington D.C. The bus journey took roughly 2 hours. Oh.. I believed I saw a sakura cherry blossoms in the park of Philadelphia. Not sure if I was correct. But I never see trees growing pale pink small flowers beside sakuras.

First, we visited the Vietnam War Memorial. The picture below is a flag post but the star shape bottom represent Pentagon and the 5 arms of the Army. Oh did I mention that the day was wet and drab. It was drizzling the entire day. So hard to get good shots too. Grr. Anyway, the book in the glass table contains all the name of the soldiers who fought and die in the Vietnam War. This will allow the family members to quickly search the name and locate it from the many panels of the memorial.
We can see that many people died in the war. Let's hope future mankind remembers that war does not pay.
Next is Lincoln Memorial & the Washington Monument. The two buildings are located at opposite ends of the reflecting pool. The tall stick structure is the Washington Memorial. And the rectangular building is the Lincoln Memorial. It has the names of all the States on the building but 2 of which was added on the ground instead, Alaska and Hawaii. They were united at a later time. Now we know why US is United States because all the States are united.. wahaha.. The way I describe sound so lame.
Then we visited the Korean War Memorial. Many statues of soldiers posing with guns, looking tired or injured.
We went to White House but we could only take pictures from afar. this is the north wing where most media reports from. Arrgh.. The weather!! So hard to get a nice shot. There's also an exhibition on some Christmas Tree. The tree is huge and decorated with nice round ornaments.

Later, we went to Capital Hill, which includes the US Capitol, the congressional office buildings, the Library of Congress buildings, the Supreme Court building and so on.
Then we visited the National Museum of Natural History. It's pretty cool! We got to see the Hope diamond, mummified bull and dinosaurs! All musuems in Washington are free, and they are located near to each other. We were give an hour to visit 2 museums. However, we only stayed in 1 musuem as there was just not enough time.I LOVE being a GEOGRAPHY student. Missed my secondary school days studying on Physical Geography. Look at all the precious stones and crystals! HUGE!

I would want to spend one whole day exploring all these museums if I ever visit Washington again. In the evening, we headed over to Jefferson Memorial. The structure is really pretty and from there we had a pretty nice night view of the city too. After that, it was a Chinese dinner and back to the hotel to rest. We stayed in Marriot that night.