I woke up at 4:00 in the morning on Friday, did my little workout and got ready, and I drove a little over two hours down south to Williamsburg, Virginia. Because I arrived over an hour before Colonial Williamsburg opens, I walked around the little recreated city before the tourists arrived. It was nice and quiet, and still very pretty even though it's winter time right now. The weather cooperated nicely this weekend as well.
I wonder if the Colonials really had blue, shaded spectacles with UV protection
After a few hours of hanging out in Colonial Williamsburg I met up with Rocky and we drove 3 1/2 hours down to Raleigh, North Carolina, to attend the temple. Thanks to pretty light traffic (and a little bit of speeding...just a little bit though) we made it there with just enough time for me to throw on a shirt and tie and get inside for the session. After two more hours sitting in the temple we drove the 3 1/2 hours back up to Hampton (which is where Rocky lives), VA. I was sitting for about 11 hours on Friday. Too much! But it was all worth it.
Yesterday I spent the whole day wandering around Yorktown, Jamestown, and back to Colonial Williamsburg.
Glass blower at Jamestown Settlement
Ha! I love it! We should do something like this today.
Wow! I can't believe how many people died when they first started coming over here. It makes me very grateful for our modern medicine.
Last night I went to a multi-stake Valentine's Day dance at the Marriott Hotel in Newport News, VA. Elder Marriott let the singles use this room for free. The event was well-planned and a lot of fun. Way to go, Rocky!
A few of the people I met at the dance. Drew (blue), Tiffany....I think that's her name (orange), and Antoine...not sure how to spell his name (black.....I'm talking about his shirt color). Antoine is training to make the 2012 USA Olympic boxing team. Cool dude. He is also learning about the LDS (Mormon) Church right now.
Rocky (on right), her brother, and her brother's fiance
I should have taken this picture later on when that thing was full of comments
I took Friday off this week and decided to visit the National Air and Space Museum located near my house. I had fun looking at the planes and learning a few things. They have an IMAX theater there so I watched a movie called "Fighter Pilot." It's about a big training exercise our pilots go through in Nevada with lots of other fighter pilots from around the world. I really enjoyed it and I practically had the theater to myself. I think there were three other people in there with me.
Friday afternoon I went down to the Senate building to Senator Bennett's office. One of his staff members was going to give me a tour of the capitol building. Because of the craziness going on with the stimulus package she wasn't able to do it. But we did meet up later on for dinner at a yummy Mexican restaurant near the capitol building.
We went back to her place after dinner and watched "March of the Penguins." What a great documentary! I think we can all learn from the penguins about how to share in the marital responsibilities. :)
How nice would that be?! Flying from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. in 1 hour, 4 minutes! I can't wait for the day when our passenger planes are flying that fast.
Shot of the Capitol at Sunset
Caleb, Soren, Anders, and Ari (my nephews), I want emails from all of you telling me why these birds can walk on top of the water. Jude, you're a little young to be writing emails. You get out of this assignment.
On Saturday, Afton and I wandered around the National Mall all day visiting different places. The temperature was perfect (I think it was around 55-60 degrees and sunny).
Looking out over the Mall, with the Lincoln Memorial way back there.
Hey Lizzie/Jarem, I can't wait for the day when one of your photos ends up in a museum out here...maybe the Portrait Gallery or the Museum of Natural History (where this photo resides). They had an animal photo exhibit in one part of the museum with a bunch of prize-winning shots of animals. This one is my favorite. The photographer waited near a pride of lions in Africa. The lioness sprinted right past the guy to join the other lions. We saw the Joseph Smith and Brigham Young portraits in the National Portrait Gallery, and they have a Lincoln portrait section right now as well for Lincoln's birthday. They also have a room with large, close-up face shots of Angelina Jolie, Jack Nicholson, Obama, McCain, and others.
The Hope Diamond in the Museum of Natural History
In front of the Supreme Court building.
Library of Congress. I need to go back and get pictures of the inside. It's beautiful! I also need to write down some of the quotes that line the inside. Great stuff.
What a cool statue! Check out those "Shrek" hands.
Near the end of our wanderings, we went up to the top of the Washington Monument and looked out over the whole city. The windows aren't the cleanest in the world, but the view sure is neat.
Tia and Marlene did a day trip up to New Jersey yesterday to help Rivka (Tia's sister) and her husband move into their new place. Tia was nice enough to let me tag along so I could explore Philadelphia for the day. This is what happened:
We arrived at the hotel where Rivka and Jeff were staying while awaiting the time when they could move into their new place. It was around lunchtime so we all drove into Philadelphia to the Reading Market to get some food. Wow! What a place. All kinds of great food; even lots of international food. I ate a Falafel platter. Here you see Rivka, Jeff, and their little baby.....and some weird guy off to the left.
After lunch I took off on my little adventure. I only had five or six hours left until the sun went down so I decided that jogging would be the quickest (and free) way to get around. Oh, and since the high temperature for the day was around 25 degrees, it was also necessary to keep my body warm. I ran about a mile down to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Rocky made those steps famous in the Rocky movies.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art (in the background).
I looked around for someone who might have a sense of humor and I found these two guys to help me out.
Philadelphia
Next I ran down to the Rodin Museum. I had never heard of Rodin until Marlene told me he was the guy who sculpted the thinking man. Oh, and I'm told his name is pronounced "Rowdan." That was a pretty neat museum and I recognized quite a few of his sculptures.
George Bernard Shaw
Eternal Springtime
The Burgers of Calais. I think these guys invented the hamburger. Just kidding. It's spelled Burghers.....or something like that.....and I have no idea what they did. I took pictures of a bunch of sculptures so I could look them up on the internet later on.
Athlete. They could make that the new Heisman Trophy. :) I'm sure Rodin would be proud to have one of his sculptures handed out as a NCAA Football trophy.
Thinking
After visiting the Rodin Museum I ran down to the other end of the tourist district. The cemetery where Ben Franklin (and other historic people) are buried is closed during January and February every year, but I got my picture. Not much else to see there anyway.
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, dedicated to soldiers of the American Revolution. Read the quotes on the wall. People don't talk like that anymore.
I saw this couple standing in the snow doing their wedding pictures. I couldn't believe it! I had all my winter clothing on and I was still cold. Must be true love. :)
Independence Hall
Inside Independence Hall
After jockeying for position with about 50 Japanese tourists, I got my picture.
"Hey! Dude with the camera! Check this out." I guess he was keeping the other leg warm. That's the Ben Franklin Bridge in the background.
Penn's Landing
I picked up a tourist magazine in the hotel room where we met Rivka and Jeff earlier in the day. I knew I had to eat a Phili cheese steak since I was in Philadelphia, but I wanted one of those "If you come to Phili, you've got to eat here." places. I found a very small ad for Pat's on one of the magazine pages and called the number to find out where it was. From Penn's Landing I had to jog about two miles into southern Phili to get to this place. It was already dark and I was cold and hungry, so I got going. I ran through cool little neighborhoods just like the ones you see in the movie Invincible, for example. Rocky too.
When I arrived I thought I noticed something familiar. See the sign in the corner of the window? It all clicked when I saw that "English Lesson" sign. This place was on the news a few years ago (maybe less than that) when they put a sign in their window that said something like, "If you don't order in English, you don't get served." Be sure to read the instructions on how to order a cheese steak. There was a nice family behind me that told me to say "Whiz wit" if I wanted my cheese steak with Cheese Whiz and onions, or "Whiz witout" if I wanted Cheese Whiz but no onions. I got the "Whiz wit." What a fun experience.
Well, it was exactly what I needed on a cold night. Not the healthiest meal in the world, but it sure did taste good. Now I can say I've had a real cheese steak, in Phili.
Mmmm, heart attack. I even added the cheese fries to complete my cheese steak experience.
I think I accomplished a lot in my half day in Philadelphia. Another great weekend trip.
Because of the inauguration today, last week I was trying to think of a place to visit since I was going to have a four-day weekend. I looked up flights to Florida, New York, Boston, back home to Utah, out to Oregon or San Diego, etc, etc. I couldn't decide. Flights were really expensive and they didn't have very good flight times. Friday night came around and I decided I was going to head up to New York City. Now I needed to figure out how I was going to get up there. Plane? Train? Bus? Drive my own car? I liked the idea of driving my car because I could stop whenever I wanted and I could come back whenever I wanted as well. Saturday morning rolled around early. I started the drive up to NYC not knowing what exactly I was going to do up there or where I was going to stay, but I'm sure glad I went.
During the drive I found out from a friend that the Manhattan Temple would be open until 5:30 that afternoon, so I decided that would be a great way to start the weekend. But first I had to find a hotel in which to lay my body at night and a place to park my car for the weekend. If you didn't know already, parking your car in NYC is not exactly cheap ($92 for the three days I was there).
I drove down to Times Square and on the way I stopped at Trump International Hotel & Tower to see how much their rooms were. $850 a night. It was more than I wanted to pay. :) So I ended up getting a room for two nights at the Marriott Hotel right in Times Square.
So nice of NYC to put up a sign telling me where the singles ward is located.
I arrived at the temple at 2:35. The session had already started at 2:30 and they only have sessions every hour and a half, so I did some other temple work until the 4:00 session started. It's an interesting temple, with floors 1-3 making up regular church meeting rooms and floors 4-6 being the actual temple. When I came out of the temple I decided to jog back to the hotel because I didn't want to pay 5-8 dollars for a taxi and because it was really cold outside.
Checking out the surroundings
When I walked up to one of the four or five people at the check-in counter and started to check in, he asked me if I was from Utah. I wasn't wearing anything that would suggest I was from Utah so I asked him how he knew. "I know my own", he said. He told me that he's originally from Sandy, Utah. He served a mission in Italy. It's a small world.
Pretty neat elevator system
This is the view I had from my room.
Saturday night I got a ticket to Phantom of the Opera and absolutely loved it. I went to the discount booth to see if I could get a discounted ticket to the show and the girl told me she had a single ticket with a "partial view" for $35. I asked her what "partial view" meant. She told me I might not be able to see part of the stage because I was pretty far to the side. Well I took it anyway and I'm very happy I did, because I saw the whole thing right on the third row!
Rachel (AKA - Rocky), a friend I met a couple weeks ago, came down (she was up in northern New York for work) and spent the next two days wandering around with me. Sunday morning we took a taxi (Expensive!) down to the site of the World Trade Center and we took a tour with two men (our guides) who were directly involved at the WTC on September 11th of 2001. They were both volunteer firefighters. The man you see in the picture and video (Joe Torrillo) was buried under one of the towers when it fell and was one of the first people pulled from the rubble. He told us his head was split open, his bones were broken, and he couldn't breath....but he was alive. Our other guide (whose name I cannot remember) was standing right next to the WTC when one of the towers started to fall. If you have seen the movie "World Trade Center", this man was part of the rescue effort for those two survivors in that movie. Amazing! It was really neat to have two guides telling us all about September 11th and the WTC using personal stories. Unfortunately the tour was so neat that we missed Sacrament Meeting back at the temple. We did make it to Sunday School and Priesthood/Relief Society.
With Joe and our second guide. Real heroes!
Our guides took us to one of the financial buildings across the street from the WTC (which is where most of the tour took place) and showed us a memorial that a particular financial institution (can't remember the name) made for 11 of their employees who died on September 11th. 11 drops of water (representing tears) fall continuously from the ceiling as a symbol of heaven crying for the 11 employees.
We made a mistake Sunday night. We found out that broadway plays (most of them) take a day off every Monday. Since we were both leaving on Monday we decided to go see "Mama Mia" on Sunday night. I can't say much good about it. The music was fun but the story is very sexual and I would never recommend it to anyone. I think the nice Spirit we had from the WTC tour, and Church earlier in the day, stayed outside the theater during the show.
Monday morning was fantastic! We first walked down to Grand Central Station and took some pictures there. I don't know anything about the place, but it's a nice building and I think I've seen the inside of it in several Hollywood movies.
We walked down to the UN Headquarters after visiting Grand Central Station. I wanted to get a picture just to say I had been to the UN Headquarters, but we ended up getting much more than that. Rocky walked up to the guards to ask a question about the meaning of the world ball that sits outside the building. One of the guards (a Marine) looked at my beanie (the one with "Who's your daddy?" sewed on it in Arabic) and asked if I was in the military. We chatted about Iraq, Afghanistan, and the military, and then they told us we could go tour the first floor with the rest of the tourists. The Marine (Juan Reyes) told us he would come and see us inside if he got off his shift within a few minutes. The first floor is boring and there's hardly anything to see, so I decided to go back out and ask Juan if he could give us a tour. Boy did he give us a tour!
He took us into the General Assembly room and as you can see, we visited places most tourists don't get to go.
I stood where Hugo Chavez and Ahmedinejad ranted about "the great satan"; where heads of state and leaders of nations have delivered speeches.
With Juan in the General Assembly room.
We got to see the UN Security Council room even though it is currently off limits to tourists because they are going to do some renovations. Actually that whole building needs renovations. Most of the furniture is original stuff from who knows how long ago.
We heard some yelling, followed the noise, and this is what we found.
After two days of trying to find someone (anyone!) who could give me the name of a "If you go to New York, you've got to eat here!" place, and I finally got one. When I checked out on Monday, Francesco Perri (the LDS guy who checked me in) gave me the name and address of an amazing pizzeria at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. We took the subway this time. There was a line outside the little pizzeria (at 3:00 in the afternoon, with snow coming down), and after eating our pizza, I understood why. It was yummy.
We walked across the bridge after eating our meal.
A little band in the subway. Check out their instruments. They were pretty good despite the not-so-fancy instruments.
This is self-explanatory. I laughed when I saw this museum marked on the tourist map.
What a great weekend! Oh, and it's only a four-hour drive (depending on the time of day) from D.C. No problem.
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
