A Photo Essay.

As they like to say in NYTimes or any other news publication. I'm a big fan of photo essays/photojournalism as it combines my interests in... photos and news. I'm a news junkie, though I can't stand TV news for some reason... probably because I think it's all bad. I'll make a plug here for a photo-news site, which regardless of your political leanings, you'll enjoy cause the photos are amazing. It's the Big Picture from Boston.com. I've never checked out what the rest of the site is, though I think it's mainly famous for the Big Picture section. Currently they have pics from the Tour de France and their war coverage is intense and graphic at times.

Anyways it is in this spirit I'm summing up our trip to DC over the 4th weekend in a photo essay form, since we all know who is strong point in the writing department of PeachesandCurry.com (actually the whole Wyche family is a strong point in the literature department!). Anyways earlier in blogger world I had described the fireworks, and this time round I'll share what else we did that weekend:

Well on the 3rd we (Peaches, Curry, Sudhir, Marina and Santosh) decided to do the touristy stuff. Correction: PeachesandCurry (how's that for 3rd person?!) decided and Marina and Sudhir were the gracious hosts with Santosh tagging along. So off we went to the Holocaust Museum... though we decided that due to the crowd we should try it some other time. That should have been an indication of what the rest of the day would be like. So we headed to the Mall for the first stop at the Washington Monument. Upon which arriving closer we found out the tickets were sold out to get to the top. It would have been neat to go all the way up there:


Last time I was in DC the WWII Memorial wasn't completed, so this was my first time. Along the walls they have these neat reliefs depicting different activities during the war period both on the home front and battlefields:


The park is divides into 2 sections: one area for the Pacific theater and the other for the Atlantic:


There is also this engraving, a section of one the most famous speeches in history:


We then made our way towards the Korean War Memorial, where I thought this was an interesting sight:


After that, it was to the Vietnam Memorial. Now I will say it was hard to note the impact of these wars/memorials with the insane crowds around us, but there were touching moments regardless of all the chatter around us:




It started to rain so we, along with a million people, headed into the Lincoln Memorial (probably the only Republican I care for):


The last straw for us was going to a museum. That to we decided on the Natural Sciences Museum. You know, stuff that kids would love. We must have been in there no more than 15 minutes. Caught a glimpse of the Hope Diamond and then bailed. Even the Pachyderm (I'll thank my bro for me knowing that word!) seemed annoyed:


After all that we were hungry. And so I was finally able to eat some Nando's Chicken! Really good stuff and this is the real finger lickin' good chicken! We have these back home in Zambia, so its a big pull for us "Zed ownes":


Anyways later that night we hit the hot spots in Georgetown, which made us Raleigh folk full jealous and wishing for the big city lights, sounds, and sights of a real big city. Of course, everything was packed. Of course. Saturday was the grill and fireworks day followed by a rocking house party where we got to catch up on some UNCA peeps and get our grove on. Dang that was a good party... Sunday was low key where we went and visited some family friends and later Beth caught up her old roomie, fabulous Tasha Daniels. Sudhir, Marina and I played ate some great Pakistani food from a hole in the wall and later played pool in their awesome condo building. Oh, the price of real estate quickly burst our (at least my) bubble of living a big fabulous city. Monday we left DC/North Va. and headed home for some rest.

One last photo blurb and that is next time if you find yourself trying to take photos with way too many people around, either take photos of the people themselves (called "Street" photography and something I'm not comfortable with yet but my bro has the hang of it) or take tight zoomed in photos of something specific. All the remaining photos will be posted on our Picasa gallery soon. Yes, there are more photos. There are always more.
Happy Friday everyone!
-S