Tag Archives: travel

Hawaii Time

We recently got to take another great trip. Like last year, we were back in Hawaii and most of the time was spent on Kauai with a bit of time on Maui at the end. There is no disguising it – Hawaii is a great place to go. Whether it is the beautiful scenery, the activities to be done or the chance to just relax away from everything for a while, it is a great spot.

We did a bunch of stuff while we were there and this is going to drip feed into the blog in the coming weeks. So much to see and report you will be sick of it before too long. However, I will try and intersperse a few other bits into the stream so you don’t feel it is too one-sided. Besides, where are the planes?

Albert Einstein

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Just across from the Lincoln Memorial is the National Academy of Sciences. On the grounds in the front of the building is a sculpture of Albert Einstein. It is a great sculpture since it is quite sizable and impressive yet is in a style that is very relaxed. It gets a few visitors at a time but isn’t very busy so is a nice distraction from the business of the rest of the Mall. It is also just the right size to encourage you to sit in his lap. I include a picture of Chris doing just that so you can gauge the scale.

Korean War Memorial

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The Korean War Memorial opened around the time I lived in DC in the 90s. I thought it was really cool when I first saw it and I still think it is an impressive monument. It is particularly good to see in the rain since the outfits the soldiers are wearing in the sculpture are big ponchos and, on a dull and wet day, the image of the guys out on patrol is particularly evocative.

It was sunny this time so the effect wasn’t quite the same but the sculptures are still very impressive. I had not remembered the water features around the memorial as much as the sculptures so this was a bit of a discovery for me. The number of visitors was very high so it was hard to get the alone feeling that seems appropriate for the whole place but it is still a very interesting place to visit.

It was not long after Memorial Day when we were there so there were a lot of flowers around the memorial and many personal messages that people had placed. This always adds a personal feel to any memorial.

US Capitol

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The US Capitol topped and tailed our trip to DC. We came into Union Station when we entered the city and so the Capitol is just a short walk away. Chris went and shot some images there while I was in my meeting so I bypassed it when I was trying to catch up with him. This ended up working in my favor.

On our return leg, the weather had improved from the cloudy skies we had started out with and, more importantly, the sun was starting to go down so the light was getting a lot more friendly. Also, a third upside was that there weren’t too many people around any more. Therefore, while we were a bit bushed and also keeping an eye on the time of our train back to the airport, we stopped off and grabbed a few shots of the Capitol before heading home.