It's not very often that Monday is included as being part of one of the most awesome weekends of your life, so here's a whole blog post about how great one of my Mondays was and how very different it was from the last Monday I wrote about.

Having never been to Washington, D.C. before my time here at TWC, the only way I had experienced the memorials that this place is famous for was from pictures in history textbooks in 11th grade. So on this beautiful President's Day morning (beautiful mostly because we didn't have to go to work), I bugged all my friends up here until we finally found our way to the metro, took the Red Line to Metro Center, switched onto the Blue Line, got off at the Smithsonian stop, and walked across the National Mall toward the monuments.

The first one we saw, of course, was the Washington Monument. You can see this incredibly tall structure from several places in D.C; I even saw it while we were driving back from the airport on my first day here. This is what it looks like with three silly kids standing in front of it:

Another interesting thing about this monument is that people like to take pictures that look like they're touching the tip of it, or leaning against it. This kind of perceptual illusion attracts many tourists in Italy with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, France with the Eiffel Tower, and apparently here in D.C. with the Washington Monument. While at the Reflecting Pool (I'll get to that part later), my friends and I saw several people taking this kind of funny picture, so we decided to try it out. I'll be the first one to say that the joke was on me, because I was the only one out of my group who did not successfully take a picture that looked like I was touching the monument. For your entertainment, here's a nice little compilation of my failed attempts at taking what would've been a really cool picture:

Next up was the World War II Memorial. It consists of 56 pillars (one for every state in the U.S. during WWII and other territories like Puerto Rico and Guam), as well as Atlantic and Pacific arches that represent the internationality of the war. Everyone in our group, being loyal to their state, found the pillar they most identified with and took a picture. This is one is mine and Annemarie's, representing Florida and the Gators!

After the World War II Memorial, we walked the length of the Reflecting Pool, toward the Lincoln Memorial. Here's something you might know about the Reflecting Pool: Remember that momentous, emotional scene in Forrest Gump where he's at the peace rally in D.C. and all of a sudden, he sees Jenny, the love of his life, running across the Pool to him and they meet in the middle and hug as thousands of people applaud them? Yeah, I've been to that place; whatever, no big deal.

After we walked the length of the Pool, during which we were freezing our faces off and trying to admire the beauty of the water and the trees and ignore the astounding amount of duck poop on the path where we were walking (seriously...what's even happening with that?), we finally made it to the end where we took those embarrassing pictures of me with the Washington Monument. We climbed up the stairs humming the theme song from Rocky, and finally made it to the memorial I was personally the most excited to see: The Lincoln Memorial.

The magnificent statue of our 16th President is truly a sight to see. My friends and I were wondering if there was any significance in the way Lincoln is sitting in the chair, the way his hands and feet were sculpted, or the way he gazes out to the Pool. I recently learned that the profile of Robert E. Lee is hidden in the curls of Lincoln's hair, and that the way that one hand is clenched and the other is open represents Lincoln's strength and compassion, respectively. Another theory exists that states that his hands spell out his initials, A and L, in American Sign Language. The Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address are carved into the left and right walls of the memorial, and are absolutely breathtaking. The patriotism and seriousness that I felt were reflected in my goosebumps while looking back at all the pictures that I took of this statue....except for one where this random lady who totally looks like my ex-boyfriend's roommate photo-bombed mine and Abe's special moment. Here it is:

Next up on our Presidents Day monument tour, my friends and I decided to rent some bicycles and ride to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. His statues were so realistic and lifelike that it gave me shivers...not to be confused with the shivers I had because it was 30-something degrees out. Dr. King is the fourth non-President to be memorialized. It was nice to see this memorial right after Lincoln's because we knew that Dr. King had given his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, so he was already present in our minds. The quote carved onto this memorial was "Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope."

After that, we got back on our bikes and rode all the way to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, which ended up being my favorite; even more than Lincoln. This memorial is one of the larger ones we visited. I think the reason I liked this one so much is that there were quotes everywhere from several speeches he had given during the Great Depression and World War II. A couple of my favorite quotes were, "More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars" and "I have seen war...I hate war."

We spent the most time at the FDR memorial because it was so large and had so many quotes we all wanted to read. But after this memorial, we kept biking toward our final stop, the Jefferson Memorial. I can't tell you the number of times we all almost fell into the Potomac River from our bikes because of the low-hanging tree branches and the pedestrians whose apparent goal is to watch you fall into the water because they would not move. But we finally made it to the Jefferson Memorial and rode around the front of it before we had to return our bikes.

After we returned our bikes, we realized that we were absolutely starving, so we did what any good group of patriotic Americans who just finished seeing all the memorials would do...we went to Chinatown and got some awesome Chinese food. That was the end of our very tourist-y Presidents Day Weekend in D.C. I can't wait to see what other adventures my remaining weekends in D.C. will bring!