9/11 + 1

Wednesday, September 11th.

On Wednesday morning, on the day of the 1-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks, we got up early and took the Metro into town together with Sandy, as she headed for work. American flags were on display everywhere, and everything did seem a litte more quiet that morning. Arriving in the city we headed over to the White House where the President was to observe a moment of silence before heading over to the Pentagon for a memorial service. Just before he was to emerge from the White House, however, the police dispersed the small crowd that had gathered and cleared the street. We moved onto the lawn on the other side of the street, and although we couldn't see more than a faceless crowd on the White House lawn and a line of limousines and police escort vehicles picking up the President we were there, at least.

We split up again and while Jens took a walk around The Mall and took a nap in a park somewhere, Dan continued his visit to the Air & Space Museum. We met up there later and walked up to China Town and had lunch there. Jens then took the Metro back "home" while Dan continued his museum tour. He visited the the fascinating dinosaur exhibit at the Museum of Natural History and lost himself completely in the exhibit on African Culture. His already established love for African music grew stronger, and he rushed to raid the museum gift shop for cd's of Afropop and traditional African music.

A visit to the Museum of American History provided a tour of more exciting exhibits as wells as a chance to see awe-inspiring pop culture relics like Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet, Muhammed Ali's boxing gloves, Michael Jordan's #23 jersey from the '95-'96 season, Judy Garland's red slippers from The Wizard of Oz and Harrison Ford's jacket and hat from the Indiana Jones movies.

That evening Sandy took us to dinner at the ESPN Zone downtown D.C. Aside from the good food we had great fun challenging each other to fight-outs in the different video games downstairs :)
On the way home we stopped at the Iwo Jima memorial and got a night-time view of the city. And we spent another night in Sandy's living room.