Washington National Cathedral

Today the kids stayed behind at the Horch home and spent the day swimming with Buzz and Joanna. I don't think that we could have drug them through one more museum or memorial! Therefore, Teresa and I took a trip to the Washington National Cathedral by ourselves. We took a more rural highway to D.C. and it was a beautiful drive. Along the way we saw the towns of Gaithersburg, Rockville, Chevy Chase, Bethesda, and then Washington D.C. We saw the Bethesda Naval Hospital, the National Institute of Health, Georgetown University and right before downtown Washington D.C. we drove along the section of road that has all of the Embassies. I didn't even recognize some of the countries that had embassies there. Very neat! The National Cathedral was really gorgeous and not very crowded at all. The weather was in the 80's and no humidity. After the tour, we drove into town for dinner and enjoyed one last look around the capitol city. Tomorrow morning we take off for home so this will probably be the last blog post for a couple of days. Take a look at today's photos.

A shot of the cathedral.

The light coming through the stained glass window made a beautiful light show.

President Woodrow Wilson is buried in this tomb.

A shot of the inside of the cathedral.

A Chapel dedicated to Mary.

One of the chapel under the main sanctuary.

Apparently all cathedrals have a cat that lives and roams at-will around the building and grounds. This is Katherine of Tarragon. She was there somewhere but we didn't see her.

There were thousands of gargoyles on the exterior of the building. Since the Cathedral wasn't official completed until 1990, they added some suggestions of gargoyle designs from school children. Someone suggested a representative of FUTURE evil. Can you spot the famous evil character in the middle of the picture? Check out a close-up on the next photo.

Darth Vader! Dum dum dum-dum.....

Another exterior shot.

Another view.

A parting shot of the front of the Cathedral.

Downtown we went by the Department of Agriculture. They turned the lawn in front of the entrance into a full fledged garden with just about every vegetable you would want. I thought that was pretty cool.

A shot of the original Smithsonian building, known as "The Castle". It had a bunch of beautiful gardens around it and a rose garden that filled the air with fragrance.