D.C. Tour

Courtesy of the U.S. Botanical Gardens..my new favorite place in D.C.

Beginning at the White House....

complete with Sasha and Melia's playset.

Continuing to the eastern end of the reflecting pool to the Washington Monument (didn't get tickets to this one either)...

and at the other end, the Lincoln Memorial..

with the Big Guy lounging inside. Gift shop is just to the right.

Thomas Jefferson has his memorial over in the ferns, right where FDR requested, so he could see it from the Oval Office.

He stands inside, bearing a startling resemblance to the T.J. bobblehead my DD brought home.

Note the amazing detail on the pediment - you can see all five men, gathered to write the first draft of the Declaration of Independence: Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, T.J. himself, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston.

At the other end of the National Mall, there's the Botanical Gardens itself, with hundreds of tiny glass panes over the orchid gardens, the desert and of course, Hawaii.

Just one block east of the Gardens stands the Capitol.

And another block east, the Supreme Court.

The real buildings don't have giant poinsettias surrounding them, and they aren't created using thousands of tiny bits of wood, sticks, nuts, bark, and oyster shell, like these.

But they're pretty impressive in their own way.