10th August, 2006

After spending a few days in New York, I travelled down to Washington DC to see the sights.

Above: The White House. There were lots of security guards just to make sure that people didn't spend too long at the fence line.

Below: The magnificent Washington Cathedral. Whilst I'm not really one for admiring architecture, the amount of detail on the inside and outside of this building was incredible.

Above: Inside the Washington Cathedral. To illustrate the amount of detail that went into this building, the stained glass in the upper right corner of the picture depicts the Earth and the Moon. In the centre of the Moon is a piece of Moon rock brought back during the Apollo era.

Below: At the far end of the Cathedral from the above image.

Above: The Washington Monument and reflection pool. Taken from the Lincoln Memorial.

Below: The actual Apollo 11 Command Module ("Columbia") that brought Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins back from the Moon. Wow!

Above: The charred heatshield on the underside of the Apollo 11 Command Module in the Air and Space Museum.

Below: The Gemini IV spacecraft on display. It held two people (James McDivitt and Ed White) for 4 days as they circled the Earth 62 times. It was from this spacecraft that NASA conducted their first spacewalk.

Above: After walking through an exhibit with huge models of all the planets this is what they had for Pluto, not long after it had been demoted. :-)

Below: The Capitol Building in Washington, home to the U.S. Congress and legislative branch of the U.S. government.