New Year's Eve in DC

Here we are on New Years Eve during the VERY early morning driving with Jared and Stef to the train station to take the train into Washington DC to view the exhibit on Pompei.   It was a great show.  Amazing how those people lived.   For this picture we were heading east right into the sunrise.   It was certainly beautiful, almost made me glad that i got up that early.

The first thing we saw when we got into the city was the Washington Monument.  Beautiful clouds,  

to bad we didn't get up early enough to get the sunrise in Washington

We turned around to see the capitol building.  and the grass on the mall.   Was a very pretty morning,  to bad it was almost at freezing, and there was a strong wind blowing the whole day.  Oh well, we are thinking of a return trip in the spring or fall when the weather is nicer.   Will probably take one of those tour busses that you can get on and off wherever you want.   See all the sights and not have to walk.

We went over to the Smithsonian building where there was a beautiful Christmas tree right in the middle of the main building.   This was the only place that was open when we arrived.   Was nice to be in out of the cold with a bathroom, and a place to buy Hot Chocolate.  There were also exhibits here also.  

This waterfall was inside one of the art galleries where we saw the Pompeii exhibit.  The water came from outside and was behind a glass wall.   I could have watched it all day, it kept changing.  Note the next couple of pictures of the waterfall

This is a picture of Winfield Scott, I like the way the reflection looks.  He was displayed in a plexiglass box 

This was a cowboy right outside the museum.   It reminded me of the cute christmas ornament we received form those folk in New Mexico.  

 This picture of a house is an optical illusion it is hard to tell if you are looking at an outside corner, or an inside one.   Keeps flipping before your eyes.  it even dose  it in the photograph.  But not as much as it did in person. 

Another interesting  sculpture,  they were all over the place.  Even on a cloudy day it was interesting,  I would have like to have seen it in the sunshine.  The shadows would have been even more interesting.

And finally the train we took getting home.  We were all so tired we almost fell asleep on the ride back to where our cars were parked.   We had to drive slowly because the train in front of on the tracks was having some issues, but once we got going we made good time.   Havin a great time on our trip.