Day 9 Washington D.C. Part 2

These are the pics of our tour of the Capital!! This post took me the longest to do because I wanted to explain the pics as well because it is so neat to know the history behind it all. It was so cool!! The building is so beautiful and it really stinks that the people that get to work there don't DESERVE to work there!! We didn't get to tour the White House (because the people that work in Reid's office SUCK but that's another story!! But I bet I would have felt the same way about the White House too;-) Anyway....

Just FYI, I'm going off of mostly memory here so if any of my info is wrong....sorry;-)

We left the Air and Space museum a little later than we thought we would and had to hustle to get to the capital for our tour. It doesn't look that far but you actually have to go in the back to get to where we needed to go and we didn't think we were going to make it. Travis and I ran in front so we could tell them we were coming! Baby girl fell asleep on the way there and my legs were burning while carrying her on my back and running!! We thought we would never get there and we had to ask new directions after every turn hoping that my parents were pretty close behind us. We finally got there in the nick of time (we still had to wait even when we got there but they were so rude on the phone that we thought they would leave without us;). My mom almost gave up and said forget it! But I'm so glad we still went.

The first place they take you is nicknamed the 'crypt' because it was supposed to be George Washington's last resting place. But in his will, he said he wanted to be buried at Mount Vernon so this area now just has different statues from history surrounding it.

D.C. was supposed to be divided into four equal sections from this star which is in the middle of the room but D.C. got too big so it's not directly in the center anymore. Our guide said that you will get good luck if you walk over it and it is sunken in because so many people have walked over it. Travis and I had to walk over it twice;) They said that the Presidents walk over it as well when they are inaugurated.

That would be me about to walk over the star;)

This is the old Supreme Court. All the chairs are different shapes and sizes depending on the preference of the judge. They said that one of the first ladies (I think Dolley Madison) would go down and observe the proceedings and even if they were at the end of a trial, she would make them start over so she could hear it all.

This is just a small rotunda outside of the old supreme court.

Very pretty chandelier.

The old Senate area. They moved it when they got too big for this room.

I can't remember where this was but it was probably outside the old Senate.

Now this was so cool! This was the Rotunda which is located above the 'crypt' and this next pic is looking up inside the dome. The mural inside it took 11 months to complete while the painter was suspended 180 feet in the air. Crazy!

This is a closer look at the mural. If you look closely, you can see George Washington on the bottom of the inner circle with two goddesses on each side (the one on his left with the horn represents victory and on his right represents liberty). There are also 13 other maidens that represent the 13 colonies and some have their back to him to represent the ones that seceded from the union at the time it was painted.

Jordyn and me looking up at it.

This is called the frieze which is all around the base of the dome. It was painted by different people because it took so long to complete. It was started by the same guy that painted the dome and when the next guy took over, he made the shoe of one of the guys different than the other so people would know where he started and the other guy left off.

On the walls of the rotunda, they have paintings that depict the development of the United States. They were huge and so cool!!

Eleven Presidents have also lain in state for public viewing after they have passed away in the Rotunda. The platform that supports each casket was what was supposed to support George Washington's casket. They use it for each President.
There were also some statues. This is Alexander Hamilton.

This is the Ronald Reagan statue! At the top of his base, they have actual pieces of the Berlin wall!!

This is the National Statuary Hall Collection (which was the old room where the House of Representatives met). They didn't know what to do with it so they just made it a statue room and had every state donate two statues to add to it. The statues got so heavy though that they thought the floor was going to fall through so they had to reinforce it and move some of the statues out to other places.

This is where John Quincy Adams sat when he was in the House of Representatives. The others used to joke that he always slept and didn't pay attention because he always had his head on his desk. Little did they know, the acoustics were all messed up because they made it like a Greek amphitheatre and if Adams bent over like that, he could hear everything that they were saying clear across the room. He would get up when it was his time to argue and he knew everything about the opposition. They were always dumbfounded as to how he knew these things. Our tour guide showed us how this worked. He went across the room while we huddled around this plaque and bent over. He said quietly, "if you can hear me, raise your hand", and we could hear him as clear as day!! It was so neat!!

This is one of Utah's statues. Brigham Young. Nevada's statues are Sarah Winnemucca and Patrick McCarran. I guess McCarran was responsible for making the eight hour work day!

We had a great time touring the Capital. It was neat to see everything in person. We also had the chance to go in to the House of Representatives and the Senate!! The House was quite boring but we saw quite a few Senators. We saw Senators McCain, Ensign, Lieberman, Shumer, Dodd, Kerry, Durbin, Burris, and dorky Al Franken and I'm sure others that I can't remember!! Some of them truly, truly don't deserve to be there but I'm so glad that we had the opportunity to go tour the Capital! It was a great experience.