American history was always just a course I sat through to earn credit hours whether it was high school or college it was always a required course that I registered for merely to check a box. That is until I discovered Europe. My love of traveling the world started with culture, food and "sightseeing". Little did I know that "sightseeing" was history. The more I saw the more it made me crave to learn more and that is how my love of world history developed.
Seeing the concentration camps made me return to the U.S. and research the holocaust; traveling to London inspired me to learn more about the royal family's roots; touring the colosseum motivated me to study the gladiators and Ancient Rome.
However, it wasn't until after I explored Europe that I thought about researching the United States. Granted Rome's history goes back quite a ways further than our founding fathers', but nevertheless, I finally discovered the importance of American history and the best part of it was that I could traipse through it in my own backyard (or a one-hour plane ride away, at least)!
My newfound historical love affair sparked Ryan and I's one-year-anniversary trip to our nation's capitol, Washington D.C., and of course I went into planning mode as we would only have two days to conquer the capital. And, after walking just over 28 miles in 48 hours, conquer we did! Here's a snapshot:
Friday evening we explored Georgetown. After indulging in tapas, we UBERed back to our hotel and walked down to the Abraham Lincoln Memorial, WWII Memorial and Washington Monument before heading back to the JW Marriott for a quick night of rest before a jam-packed weekend of sightseeing!
Our Saturday consisted of touring the U.S. Capital Building, viewing the White House, the V.P. Office Building, the Blair House, Iwo Jima Memorial, Korean War Memorial, WWII Memorial, Washington Monument, Thomas Jefferson Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, taking a boat cruise on the Potomac River for lunch, touring the National Archives to see the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Magna Carta among other documents. We took a Lincoln assassination tour viewing each building in the timeline of Booth and Booth's conspirators' day and ended at Ford's Theatre. Then, to end our day we went back and viewed most every monument/memorial we toured earlier in the day to see them while they were illuminated.
Our next day we went to tour the inside of Ford's Theatre and The Peterson House. We then ventured out to the Newseum seeing pieces of the Berlin Wall, the World Trade Center towers, and various artifacts from the FBI archives such as the unibomber's cabin. We walked over to the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum to see the Wright Brothers' first plane, NASA's exhibits, and the plane that flew around the world. We ended our museum explorations with the National Museum of American History where the highlight was seeing the original "Star Spangled Banner". We stopped for a quick break at the Willard Hotel's Cafe du Parc before heading to Arlington Cemetery for the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and to see the eternal flame outside of President John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and their children's grave site.
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| These were the published front pages from each of our home-state papers on our first anniversary, Aug. 31, 2014. |
One year down, a lifetime of adventures to go! Happy First Anniversary Mr. Ryan Barry.
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