Junior Trip to DC
This Wednesday the junior class at our school went to Washington D.C. We left at 4 in the morning to get to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in time to get tickets. We ate breakfast in Haymarket around six. We got on the metro in Vienna and got off close to the Washington Monument.
We went to the Bureau of Engraving first to get tickets at 8, then we waited an hour and at 9 we took the tour. I would like to have more pictures of the tour but we couldn’t use our phones during the tour so I only have this picture from before the tour.
The tour was interesting and the gift shop was hilarious. They had some cool stuff like an uncut sheet of various types of bills, but they also had stuff like basketballs, footballs, hats, and other weird stuff with prints of bills on them. It was funny how basically if you could put a print of bills on it they did.
After that we went to the Holocaust Museum.
After that we went to the Washington Memorial. We went up to the top and looked around. It was really cool, but it was kinda cloudy and whatever but it was still cool. One interesting thing was you couldn’t touch the Monument. It was all covered in glass. Their reason was all the people touching it would wear it down.
After that we ate lunch at some food trucks. It rained pretty solidly after we got out of the monument so we ate under a roof at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
We toured the Capitol building after we finished lunch. We had gotten the tickets through our Congressman’s office so we went into one of the office buildings and met one of his employees who gave us the tour. He took use down an elevator and we walked through some tunnels to get into the Capitol. These connect a bunch of the buildings together so the officials can get between buildings quickly without using the streets. After we got into the Capitol we actually toured it. It is a really cool building with tons of marble. He said that the Congressman wanted to meet us so we actually met him! He shook all our hands, asked our teacher questions, and then asked if we had seen Congress because it was in session. We said we hadn’t and there wasn’t enough time before the gallery closed. However, since he is a Congressman he got us in. It was really cool to watch. We watched them vote a few times. It is truly organized chaos. When we were there at least 420 of them voted. We couldn’t take our phones into the gallery which was sad but it was really cool to watch.
After the Capitol we took the metro back to Vienna and then ate supper at Famous Dave’s and headed home.
It was a ton of walking and standing but it was a really fun trip. I would totally go again. We are going to DC for our high school field trip as well so stay tuned for that.
Here are a few pictures that didn’t really fit anywhere.
