Friday was our day to tour as much as possible while we were in D.C. Thanks to very helpful people from the event we attended Thursday night, we started the day by waking up early to make it to Ken Calvert’s office (our state rep) to see about getting a tour of the U.S. Capital. We actually beat everyone to his office and waited for out contact to arrive. Then we needed to wait for the interns, so we headed down to the cafeteria for a pretty yummy breakfast. I wish I had a cafeteria like that set up at home! I’d eat good every morning! LOL!

When we were finished, and no longer starving, we went back up to Mr. Calvert’s office and were all set to go on a personal tour of the Capital by Ethan, one of the interns. It was really enjoyable since it was only the three of us. It was nice to linger when we wanted to and speed up as we pleased. We got to take the tunnel from the representative offices to the Capital, which is lined with art work from High Schools all over the U.S.

I mostly took pictures of statues and some architecture, but instead of swamping the post with all of them I’m going to share two of my favorites.

This chandelier has a neat story. It was offered to be included in the Capital building when it’s original home (I think it was a cathedral or a church) needed to get rid of it. The fun fact on this was that it takes two men nine hours to clean it by hand. Can you imagine? It is rather large and I also loved the ceiling surrounding it.

I loved this ceiling. Completely forgot the name of the room it is in. I blame it on my brain being on the East Coast when it is still thinking of West Coast time. I actually had Don lay on the floor, of the rather busy room, for this shot and he did a pretty good job! The painting shows the gods passing wisdom along to our Founding Fathers.

Here are some of the better close ups Don took:

Two things I learned after this day.

1. I really need to take a class or something on my camera. There’s still lots I need to learn so I increase my number of “good” pictures.

2. I should probably study American history once in a while.

Don’t tell my Dad I said that last one.