Almost done walking...

The girlfriend and I are just about done with walking for the day. We're taking another break in front of the Washington Monument, after seeing the FDR Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial. Both of us have aching feet and ankles, so it'd be pretty much pointless for us to try to see many more of the sights here in DC, since we'd be suffering more than we'd be enjoying anything.

I took some pictures of the FDR Memorial, but as we were wandering through, I got the low-battery light on my camera, so I had to severely limit the pictures I took after that in order to get any of the Jefferson Memorial. Here are the ones I took at FDR:






There are a lot of water features at the FDR Memorial, but a lot of them were turned off now. Since most of the monument is brick walls and large stone structures, a lot of it just looked like piles of stones. I don't know if they're going to turn more of the water features on later or not. There were quite a few pieces of construction equipment in that area, so maybe it was just undergoing some repairs or renovations. The water features that were operational were pretty splendid:


As we were walking toward the Jefferson Memorial, a tour bus full of Japanese tourists unloaded pretty much right where we were walking. So we were surrounded by a bunch of people taking pictures, chatting about things, and generally doing the same kinds of things as we were. Which is fine, except that it made us a little more conscious of trying not to get in the way of the photographers or in the way of the little groups trying to go places faster than we were going. In general, it just made us want to get away a little quicker.

Some pictures I snapped of the Jefferson Memorial, as we approached along the Tidal Basin:


From near the back steps:


From the side, showing a little glimpse of the statue of Jefferson inside:


A view up the front stairs:


And a view of the monument from a little further away in front:


We were both feeling a little too tired to climb the stairs into the monument itself, and we also didn't really want to wade through the crowd of tourists inside, so we just settle with those pictures for now and head up toward our parking garage. We passed several people who we had seen during the course of the day, and all seemed to be pretty beat, including several couples younger than us, so we didn't feel quite as bad about having to cut our hike a little shorter than we would have liked.

Right now, we are resting across the street from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which I guess is where the stamps and the money are printed, or at least designed and developed.


I like the designs on the walls which can be seen between the columns. Kind of a Greek-style scroll design:


Now I believe that I'm going to go get the car and pick the girlfriend up from the little bus turnout here along the street. I'm pretty beat, but her ankles are hurting her too much for her to make the rest of the walk without being in total agony most of the way. So off I go...