Pic Spocket

The day I missed the Red Bull Air Race in Detroit, I had to travel to Alexandria Virginia for a meeting. This is really close to Washington DC. I arrived over there quite early on Sunday, so I had a chance to do a little bit of sightseeing. Since I already went downtown my previous trip over there and because of construction work in the subway, I decided to pass by the Arlington Cemetery in Arlington which was much closer to Alexandria. This is right across the Potomac River from Washington, in proximity to the Pentagon.

This military cemetery is quite impressive with its countless fields of white gravestones. Almost 300 000 people are buried there.

There are also several memorials within the park. For example, there is the USS Maine memorial for the ship that sunk in Havana, Cuba in 1905. Its mast is part of the memorial. Also, there is the “tomb of the unknowns”, one of the most popular sites, which contains remains of unknown American soldiers from the World War I & II, the Korean conflict and the Vietnam war.

Near this site is the Memorial Amphitheater, which I found interesting for a few “abstract” pictures.

Finally, a little bit outside of the cemetery was the US Marine Corps memorial depicting the iconic picture taken by Joe Rosenthal during the battle of Iwo Jima. The size of the memorial was very impressive. Also, closer to Alexandria is the George Washington Masonic Memorial dedicated to the memory of the first president of the United States and a mason.

As usual, many more pictures in the album below.

Outside links:

• Arlington Cemetery website
• Arlington Cemetery on Wikipedia
• USMC War Memorial on wikipedia
• George Washington Masonic Memorial

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 6:28 pm and is filed under Travel, Album update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.