Washington, D.C., the Nation’s Capital. My earliest memories of our Nation’s Capital date back to when I was a young kid in elementary school flipping through history book after history book in the school library. Since those days I’ve always wanted to see our Nation’s Capital and all of the historic monuments located there in person, but as a kid I never really knew if I ever would get that opportunity in the future.

Fast forward to the summer of 99 when I was helping a good friend of mine move his family from Ft. Bragg, NC to Springfield, MA before he was to attend the US Army’s Officer Candidate School in Ft. Benning, GA. We made the long 12 hour drive without stopping aside for the mandatory gas, food and bathroom breaks.  That was when I got my first glimpse of our Nation’s Capital, through the windows of a 1990ish Toyota Camry while stuck in traffic along the Capital Beltway. It was not a fun experience by any stretch of the imagination and our bladders can attest to that as we were stuck in some horrendous traffic between D.C. and Baltimore where we couldn’t even find a place to stop for a bathroom break.

So ironically, even with my great travel benefits I still somehow managed not to make it to D.C. until this last September, when I traveled to D.C. to cover Sophiline Cheam Shapiro and Khmer Arts’ performance at NEA’s National Heritage Fellowship Concert. During that time, I was lucky enough to have some free time to site see during the day while Sophiline and Khmer Arts were busy practicing for the concert. I should also note that I was lucky enough to be staying at a hotel that was within easy walking distance from the Bethesda Metro Station: my affordable and easy to use link from Bethesda to pretty much anywhere I wanted to go in D.C.

Anyways, Part One of this entry starts with Arlington National Cemetery. I’ve got to admit, I didn’t know what to really expect when I first stepped off the escalator from the Metro’s Arlington Station. All I knew was that I wanted to visit Arlington to pay my respects to all of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in defending our nation’s freedom. My original plan was just to make a quick walk through of whatever parts of the cemetery that I could; however, after arriving at the visitor’s center to pick up a copy of a map of Arlington, I pretty much figured that the “quick” part of my plan wasn’t going to happen. Because of my time constraints, 5 hours before returning to cover Sophiline and Khmer Arts’ official practice at the Strathmore, I decided to purchase a ticket on one of Arlington’s tour mobiles. The tour mobile was supposed to give you a one and a half hour tour of the Kennedy Grave sites, Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers and the Arlington house if you were to make a stop at each site, but I found that to be grossly incorrect unless you only spent 15 minutes or less at each site. Unfortunately for me I ended up missing several buses and my hour and a half tour turned into a two and a half hour adventure before I finally gave up and just walked from site to site as it was quicker in the end. Anyways, I’ll stop here with the long entry and let you get onto the pictures. If you would like more information about any of the sites pictured below just run your cursor over the photos for the captions then visit the Arlington National Cemetery website here. Enjoy!