A Beautiful Day to be a Tourist

Yesterday was a gorgeous day here in the DC area!  

(I heard about and saw pictures of the snow they got in Utah--crazy!)  

Anyway, we took advantage of the nice weather to be tourists again.  

We first went to the Washington National Cathedral.

It is a beautiful building in the Gothic style.  We enjoyed walking around inside and taking pictures.  I loved the color of the stones used.  The old ones I've been to in Europe are pretty amazing--each one has a story and they are all unique.  But to be honest, I loved the light color of this one.  And I liked that the pictures and decorations and such weren't overly grotesque.  They were intricate, and very nice.

 Last year when the earthquake happened in the DC area, the top of the cathedral had some shifting.  They had a little exhibit inside showing some pictures of how it looked and the renovations they were doing.  Glenn wanted us to take his picture right here--just like this too.

I love when he has these photo ideas--they are great!

 Inside...

 Glenn saw these and knew what story it was telling.  I think one of his favorite stories in the Bible is about David and Goliath.  Grandma Robyn and Grandpa Dennis gave him a book on the story and he almost has it memorized.  Thanks for the great book!

 Glenn had found his favorite thing and I showed him my favorite window.  This one looked like the cosmos or something out in space.  I thought it was beautiful and very different than other stained glass windows I've seen.

 And this was the large window from the front.  The cathedral had a bit net near the top--I'm assuming to either discourage birds from making nests up there.  But even with that on, it was still beautiful.

 We were allowed to go up to the 7th floor to the observation room.  We got to walk around and see DC and surrounding areas from the top.  It was a bit hazy so we didn't take any pictures, but I took one of my boys as we walked around.  

 Then we had a bathroom break.  On the way down the stairs we saw this stone:

 It was a stone from Mount Sinai!  We both touched it and thought that was pretty cool!

 Paul had heard from someone that there was a Darth Vador 'gargoyle' on the exterior of the cathedral.  I didn't believe him because it sounded ridiculous.  Well, I was wrong!

 Here is the cathedral from the other side--you can see where they are rebuilding the part that was damaged in the earthquake.  

 They had a small herb garden on that side and we walked around in it.  

 We saw this simple, yet beautiful statue of the prodigal son.  It was a very moving statue and captured the essence of the scriptural parable very well.

 We showed Glenn what a sundial was...

 ...and he wanted to take pictures of the plants in the garden.

 Across the street was a statue of George Washington.  

 And this was a cool sign on the grounds.  We thought Temple Square should do something like that--pretty cool.  They had little cathedrals on all the little signs around.

We enjoyed our time there.  Oh!  And we got to hear them playing the bells!  Fantastic!