Day Two: for the first half of the 2nd day, we were wandering about the halls of the Pentagon, knocking on the doors of the Joint Chiefs, and getting chummy with famous newsanchors. now, we're pretty proud of the fact that we got into the Pentagon… perhaps you're not aware, but the only people allowed (generally) to tour the pentagon are school groups and members of the military. the one exception to that rule would be–you gotta know somebody. as it turns out, ben had interviewed a guy a while back who offered to "take him around" if he should "ever come to Washington." good thing ben remembers stuff like that, and good thing he's not afraid to bring it up again.

we ended up getting the five hour personalized tour, and after it was over, we were all ready to call it quits. but, rather than doing that, we decided we might as well head on over to Arlington (practically just next door, by Metro) and enjoy that while we were already out and about. We did, it was nice, it was hilly, our feet were killing us, we were tired, we went back to the hotel & took naps after.

after napping not quite sufficiently, we got up for our night-time walk through the Mall and to the White House. and walk we did.

now, i haven't mentioned yet, but our hotel was in a fairly favorable position in the greater scheme of things. two blocks from a Metro stop, four or five blocks from the white house, five or six blocks from the washington monument. nevertheless, after the pentagon and arlington visits earlier in the day, our feet weren't much more than little gobs of goo we'd stuffed in our shoes before going out again.

we found and photographed the White House (seemed smaller than i was expecting), trekked over to the washington monument, then we were going to go to the Lincoln Memorial, but decided we'd rather see Jefferson at night.

oops.

the Jefferson Memorial is a hellaciously long way from the Mall on gobs of goo.

still, we did finally make it there, and enjoyed several minutes resting on the handy benches. our day was done—it was now back towards the hotel and to bed.