Arlington and the White House

 This morning we drove to the Laurel train station where we parked the minivan.  We took the MARC train from Laurel to Washington Union Station, and then we took the Red Line of the DC Metro from Union Station to the Metro Center.  We transferred from the Red Line to the Blue Line for the Arlington Cemetery.  We walked from the Arlington Cemetery Metro Station to the Welcome Center, and we spent some time looking at the various exhibits.  We boarded a shuttle bus that took us around the cemetery and then dropped us off at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  We sat and watched a soldier of the 3rd Infantry Regiment, or "Old Guard", step back and forth in front of the tomb until we had the opportunity to watch the Changing of the Guard ceremony.  After the ceremony we walked to Arlington House and then down to the John F. Kennedy Memorial to see the "Eternal Flame".

All of this took a fair amount of time and we were scheduled for a tour of the White House before noon.  It had taken considerable effort to plan and receive tickets for the White House, and we found ourselves hurrying back to the metro station.  We discovered that the subway was temporarily out of service, and the next train was going to be at least twenty minutes later.  Ashley and Caz quickly changed plans and called an Uber, but when the car arrived we saw that it could only take four of us.  We had to split up so Ashley, Wendy and I took the first car while Caz and Jeffrey waited for a different one.  We were dropped off next to the entry for our tour, and after a few stressful minutes we saw Caz and Jeffrey running towards us.  They had been dropped off on the wrong side and had to run to arrive just in time as this was the final tour of the day.

The White House was one of the highlights of our trip to Washington D.C.  We had a view of the Rose Garden and the East Wing.  We saw several rooms including the Vermeil Room, Library, China Room, State Dining Room, Green Room, Blue Room, and the Red Room.  We bought a souvenir ornament and took several pictures outside the main entrance.

From the White House we walked down Pennsylvania Avenue and stopped to take a picture at the Old Post Office building which was now the Trump International Hotel.  We continued walking past the National Archives, and we found a place to eat at a place called Potbelly Sandwich Works.  We decided that we had done enough touring for the day, and we returned back to Laurel the way we came.