Arrived in DC

Well, Tamiko and I had a glorious first day in our Nation's Capitol yesterday. We took a red-eye on Thursday night to arrive at Dulles at 7-ish am. We had a little of a hard time finding the super shuttle but once we were on the shuttle it was smooth sailing. We arrived at our hotel, Helix Hotel, a Kimpton hotel like when Nick and I stayed in Chicago. Super excited that the early check-in did work (usual check for DC is 3pm). We decided on a quick nap to get our breath back which turned into a 2 1/2 hr nap but boy did it feel good.
From then on we were exploring all of DC for our first day. We walked everywhere. Surprisingly it was not complicated to get around. We are only about 8 blocks from the White House, which we hit first. We walked the National Mall some. The best icon is the Washington Monument, if you can see it then you can quickly figure out where you are going. We then headed towards the Lincoln Memorial, but saw a WW2 monument at the head of the reflecting pool. People were wading their feet in it's cool waters. We noticed a concert setup at the Lincoln memorial,called Restoring Honor. The Lincoln Memorial did not disappoint. It was just inspiring to see Mr. Lincoln there, imposing watching over us all. His words of wisdom echoing off the marbled walls. We walked over to the Jefferson Memorial, which on our first guess looked a lot closer. On our way we stumbled upon a Korean war memorial. It had a platoon of soldiers walking through the grass and a wall monument of various faces of the troops. We continued over to the ever far Jefferson monument. By now the sun was setting and our day was coming to a close. We reached Jefferson and saw his gradiose bronze statue basking in the setting sun casting him in a golden light. By now we were totally tired walking back to the heart of DC. We were now in search of a restaurant which ended up not being as easy at it seems. We ended up cashing our chips in at a Hard Rock Cafe, which I had not been to in at least 15 years. Afterwards we walked around till we reached our hotel room at 10:30pm...what a full day here in Washington DC.