Godon family visits DC

Early in the morning of August 2nd, a Saturday, Mary drove me to the train in Albany. Some hours later at Penn Station I didn't have time to even look around when someone was tapping me on the shoulder. There was Lauryne Godon and we needed to catch a train to Newark Airport where her mom and dad would be waiting with a rental car. Running is not my strong point. We reached the first NJ train as the doors closed. Fortunately we didn't have to run for the second one!

Francis and Marie-Annick were waiting for us, loaded my baggage into the car and plugged in the TomTom, GPS, that I had brought with me. We were off to Alexandria, VA to stay with Shelli while touring Washington DC. That evening Francis and Lauryne met Kevin at Dulles Airport while Shelli, Marie-Annick, and I went food shopping. Shelli decided to be more than just the host. She would play tourist along with us. That made my life a lot easier. Shelli understood the subway system!

We decided to take a tour bus around Washington DC. That would give us an overview of the city and allow us to get off and on again where we wanted to spend some time. Since I put pictures of most of the memorials and monuments that are near the Tidal Basin on this blog for the trip to DC I had taken last September, I didn't bother taking those same pictures again...

I can't tell you what all the places are that we passed, but this is the train station. It has a gold ceiling. The gold flakes off the ceiling so they put a net underneath to catch the gold...otherwise we might have been interested in wandering through the place.

This is where our politicians make sure that the common man sees less and less "gold" while the wealthy see more and more.

We had brought bag lunches and found a table by an outdoor snack bar. The birds were busy gathering crumbs.

The scaffolding is off!

This is what the Tidal Basin looks like close up. Definitely not conducive to swimming.

 

The World War II Memorial

By the end of day 1 my feet were glad to reach "home" and relax while the younger crowd got dinner on the table. It was a merry group. I never did find time to read the book I'd brought along!