This was our first time visiting and we took the tour and it was wonderful! I highly recommend it. The tour was about 45 minutes. A tour is not required, you can just poke around yourself, but I highly recommend taking the tour before poking around. The tour explains so much and it makes the poking around more interesting because you know what to look for.
This is the center aisle of the Cathedral. We were standing at about the mid-point.
The stained glass windows are exquisite; even if taking photos of them is difficult. Some of the stained glass windows are giant. Giant like the people portrayed in them are life size.
Why, yes, that is George Washington in stained glass form.
Clockwise from top left: Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, Paul Revere's ride, Paratroopers, planting the flag at Iwo Jima.
Windows in the afternoon sun and the pretty colors they put on the pillar.
The space window represents man's flight to the moon. The small circle at the bottom is earth, the straight lines are the flight path, the large circle is the moon. In the center of the moon is an actual moon rock.
This was my favorite window. It looks like a painting I would like to have in our apartment.
Clockwise: A chapel scaled to the size of a six year old; a tapestry with the seals of all 50 states, a seat reserved for a Senator, a cross made from fragments of the Pentagon attacked on 9/11.
If you visit the Washington National Cathedral, go to the seventh floor, there are some great views.
The grounds are pretty lovely, too.
We sat for a minute and it felt so good to put my bare feet in the soft grass. I haven't had a chance to do that since I left Utah.
The sky was ridiculously beautiful.
We think we saw the Darth Vader gargoyle. But we couldn't tell for sure because we didn't bring binoculars.
T felt like going to the Lincoln Monument, so we did.
If you're looking for a less crowded photo-op with the epic pillars, head to the backside of the Monument.
The government is re-doing the floor of the reflecting pool along with several other renovations, including my personal favorite World War I Memorial. Hey, it's us with Lincoln! Somewhere I have a photo of us with Lincoln back in 2007 from our first cross country road trip when we first started dating...
It's interesting that one of our most humble Presidents is enshrined in what is essentially a giant Greek temple.
An epic photo taken by T. As we were leaving, a high school band was playing patriotic songs at the base of the Monument. Pretty cool stuff.
The Vietnam Memorial is near the Lincoln and we visited that as well, though we didn't take any photos. There are big books at both ends of the Memorial that have all the names listed in alphabetical order and their location on the wall, if you are looking for someone specific. The names of the people on the Wall are listed in the order they were killed in Vietnam. The Wall and the things left behind always make me cry.
Then we zipped home to change and headed to the adult session of Stake Conference where they announced our ward split (finally). Our stake re-did the existing boundaries to add three new wards; so we now have 13 wards. We would have had a stake split, but we don't have the property for another stake center yet. Our ward went from 792 members to 430. Our old ward had three nurseries. We were nursery leaders of the oldest kids and we only kept 2 out of 13 kids! That makes me a little sad. Oh, our previous ward was so big, that when they announced the new bishopric for our new ward, I had never seen any of those men in church before. Our meeting time and location didn't change, so no worrying about showing up at the wrong time!
Fun! Adding to my list! The purple flowers look like the ones in your wedding photos!
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