Vacation Day Six

On Thursday we planned on visiting the area around the White House and then Ford's Theater (where Lincoln was shot). Since we hadn't contacted our Representative early enough to get on a tour of the White House, we'd just have to walk around the outside.

We went to the metro station near the White House and started walking. It was really easy to find, we just had to follow the protesters and tourists.

Here's a view of the North face of the White House.
And here are all the tourists standing in front of the White House fence.

And this is one of the counter-sniper positions on the White House roof.

To get to the south lawn, we had to walk a few blocks out of the way to get around the fence. On the way we stopped at the White House visitor's center.
This is the main hall of the visitor's center. The center had a bunch of displays of stuff (china, fabric, etc) from the White House. The kids got bored pretty quick.

Then, we found a kids center. It consisted of pictures to color and markers. Suddenly the kids were interested...
Here Molly and Abby color their pictures.

After coloring in the visitor's center for a while, we headed out again to go to the south lawn.
Here's a view of the south face of the White House. I was surprised by how small the building was.
Amy and the kids posed for a picture in front of the lawn. Unfortunately they were all looking into the sun, so they look a little squinty.
Then, they did a "silly" picture. Thomas was too mature to be silly, so he didn't want to be in the picture. Amy managed to be silly, while Molly and Abby understood "silly" to mean rub your eyes.

After the White House, we headed over to Ford's Theater.
The Park Service runs the theater as a tourist site during the day, and a working theater in the evening. During the day, there are presentations every 30 minutes. We had gotten tickets (from Ticketmaster!!) earlier, and it was a good thing we did. When we arrived, there was this long line in front. We thought they were people waiting for tickets, but it turned out to be ticket holders waiting for their presentation. We got in line and waited in the sun for our presentation to start. When they opened the doors, we finally got to go into the air conditioning.
We sat in the balcony for the presentation. A Park Ranger came out and gave a really interesting 15 minute talk on the events of the day of Lincoln's assassination. I thought it was interesting, but Thomas got pretty bored. I think it was because he was expecting explosions and people running and lasers and such. All he got was talking.

This is the box where Lincoln was shot. The flags and furniture are supposed to be accurate recreations and some originals from that day.
After the talk at Ford's Theater, we could have visited the room where Lincoln died. After he was shot, his staff moved him across the street to this boarding house, where several hours later he died. We didn't feel like waiting in line again, so we skipped this part of the tour and headed back to our hotel.

On the way home, Molly got to do one of her favorite activities. She got to ride and play on the metro train.
Here she is dancing around the pole in the train.

After we got back to our hotel, we headed back to the waterfront. The kids played on the sand and in the statue again.
Here's the hand reaching out of the sand
Molly sitting on the sand. She was filling her sandals with sand.
And here she is climbing out of the giant's mouth
Abby sitting on the giant's head.
Thomas played in the giant's mouth.