Mount Vernon is George Washington's home estate, and what is so cool about it is that the Mansion is the ORIGINAL, not a reproduction. Even 50% of the furniture, art, etc inside the rooms in the house are original. It's hard to believe everything is still so intact. Another interesting thing I didn't know was that President Washington died from a disease that slowly asphyxiated him. Once he died in their bed, Martha, his wife, closed their master bedroom door and never slept in there again. She moved upstairs to the attic room...
George and Martha never had their own children, however, Martha had four children from her previous marriage and four grandchildren from her youngest son. Martha outlived her two husbands and four children. She died two years after George...
This model of the Mansion located in the visitor's center was absolutely incredible. Every little girls' dream!!
This amazing greenhouse is MY dream!! In colder weather, the Washingtons would have all of their citrus trees and palm trees moved into the greenhouse where a slave would fan heat from the fireplace under the flooring to keep the temperatures in the room high. George and Martha were able to have lemonade year round...
The Mansion was actually very small when George inherited the property. The right and left wings on the Mansion were added later. The view of the river from the back of the house is incredible...
A panoramic of the back of the house looking out at the river...
George and Martha are buried right on the property inside the small brick building in the center. They have a guard there day and night...
The Washington's estate, or Mount Vernon, is huge with it's gardens, grazing fields, forests, etc.
The cute little historic old town of Alexandria, VA, where we stayed the night, had this cool ice cream shop called Nicecream where they mix the ice cream ingredients in a Kitchen Aid mixer and then add liquid nitrogen to freeze it on the spot. Of course, when they pour in the liquid nitrogen, it creates this awesome fog that the kids thought was so cool...
Arlington National Cemetery and the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I didn't know this, but they actually identified the World War II unknown soldier through DNA testing. The tomb is empty now because the man was moved to another cemetery closer to his family...
The Memorial Amphitheater...
The Eternal Flame where President John F. Kennedy and family are buried...
The Pentagon 9/11 Memorial. It just so happened we were there on September 11th, and had just missed the memorial ceremony. It's an interesting memorial with these benches and water running underneath for each person who died. The names are engraved very small on the end of each bench, and the silver lines leading off the benches run towards a wall that has the date of birth for each of the deceased. The youngest to die during the terrorist attack at The Pentagon on September 11, 2001 was three years old...
The Pentagon, the headquarters of the Department of Defense, is one of the world's largest office buildings with about 6,500,000 square feet providing office space and amenities for more than 23,000 employees, both military and civilian. The building has five sides, five floors above ground, two basement levels, and a total of 17.5 miles of corridors. I wish we would have had time to do the one-hour tour...
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