Being Touristy - the Lincoln Memorial

My dad and me at the Lincoln Memorial

On day two of the family DC visit, we made a stop at the Lincoln Memorial. This monument, as with all the DC monuments, takes much longer to walk to than you would think. It's about a mile west of the Washington Monument. The good thing about the walk to the Lincoln Memorial, however, is that you pass a lot of other memorials on your way.

WWII Memorial

First up is the World War II Memorial. It's located at the east end of the reflecting pool and, for being a memorial to such a bloody war, is very pretty. It's centered around a really pretty fountain.

Nasty reflecting pool

Then you have the reflecting pool itself, which based on movies and TV you'd think is very pretty. It's not. Or at least it's not at this time of year. It had been drained as was surrounded by a fence. Pretty gross actually.

Korean War Memorial

Then at the northwest and southwest corners of the pool, respectively are the Vietnam veterans memorial and the Korean War veterans memorial. Unfortunately we didn't know they were there when we visited the Lincoln memorial, so we missed them.

Vietnam War Memorial

Then there's the Lincoln memorial. First off, it's giant. Much bigger than I expected it to be. We seem to have a thing for making stuff huge in this country... Once you walk up lots and lots of steps to get inside, Lincoln himself is pretty huge too. The walls contain inscriptions of Lincoln's Gettysburg address and second inaugural address. There's a tiny gift shop tucked away in the northeast corner of the memorial. Contains mostly books.

Some interesting facts about the Lincoln Memorial:

Amanda and Abe

• It's designed after the temples of ancient Greece.
• The first bill commissioning a monument in honor of Lincoln was passed in 1867, but it took Congress until 1914 to take any action on actually building a memorial. It was completed in 1922.
• The Greek temple design was criticized as too ostentatious for a man of Lincoln's humble character. Opponents suggested a simple log cabin memorial instead. 
• The memorial cost $300,000 to build.
• The memorial includes 36 columns, one for each state in the Union at the time of Lincoln's death. The names of those states and the dates they entered the Union are inscribed above the columns, and at the top of the memorial are the names of the 48 states in the Union at the time of the memorial's dedication.
• There was an error in the engraving of Lincoln's second inaugural address. In the line, "With high hope for the future," the "F" of the word "future" was originally carved as an "E." To cover the mistake, the bottom line of the "E" is not painted in.
• Some have claimed that the face of General Robert E. Lee was carved onto the back of Lincoln's head and looks back across the Potomac towards his former home, Arlington House.
• Over 3.6 million people visit the memorial annually.