Tourists in Our Own City

Michelle and I continue to hit up all the tourist attractions here in DC. I feel like we are tourists in our own city. Our goal is to see and do everything in DC before we leave in a couple years. We have been two more tourist attractions. On our list of unique-to-DC things to do here I think these places would be numbers 6 and 7. The first place is the National Cathedral. What really sparked our interest in visiting the National Cathedral was reading about it in The Lost Symbol. Pretty much everything in the book is true: there is a moonrock in one of the stained glass windows, there are 10 rocks from Mt. Sinai, and they have a gargoyle of Darth Vader. I consider our visit to the National Cathedral one of those pleasant surprises when you don't really know what to expect but really enjoy the experience. It was pretty similar overall to the cathedral in Montreal that we visited earlier this year. The tomb looking picture is where President Woodrow Wilson is buried. His wife, the first and only acting female president, also remains at this cathedral.



The second place to visit is Freedom Plaza. Freedom Plaza is really more of a place that you visit when there is something planned there like a rally or a protest; although you could go there just to walk around and check it out. It is a really long story that deserves its own blog post, but in a nutshell, the union that Michelle and I belong to (you pretty much are automatically members by becoming teachers here in Washington) had a rally on Freedom Plaza to protest a number of things going on right now with the DCPS. I did not necessarily go to full on protest but more to observe and simply show unity with my fellow teachers at my school. It was a very interesting experience and I am glad that I got to participate in a protest that actually involved both me and michelle.