Weekly Photo Challenge: Treat

A rare treat . . . playing tourist in my own town!

Our theme for the Weekly Photo Challenge this week is:  Treat.
Our instructions:  Treats and indulgences can take many forms.  Share yours with us!

I’m taking the treat theme down a different path.

My husband’s mom, and her husband, came for a visit this past weekend.  They had never seen some of the DC memorials and monuments, so we set off to play tourist in our own town. We don’t often go downtown, because of the paralyzing traffic (DC owns the title for the worst traffic in the country, and we deserve it).  So, playing tourist in DC is a carefully orchestrated maneuver to avoid traffic on both ends of rush hour — in by 10, out by 2:30.  If you leave earlier, or wait later, you will pay with your sanity.

When I was a kid (I grew up just outside of Washington, DC) I used to dread it when family and friends visited.  Because that meant we had to go downtown to visit the monuments (insert tweenage eye-roll and attitude).  And I was pretty sure the Lincoln Memorial was the most borrrrr-ing of all the monuments.  It’s just a President (was Abraham Lincoln really that big? 😉), sitting in a chair, surrounded by a bunch of words.

Fast forward 30+ years.  Who knew I’d grow up to be a logophile, and count the Lincoln Memorial among the most interesting of the monuments.  Because it’s more than just a really big President sitting in a chair.  It’s a shrine of symbolism (something completely lost on the tweenage me), and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a touch of starry-eyed awe, standing there next to Mr. Lincoln and his words.

Nikon D800
ISO 640 | 60mm | f/2.8 | 1/400 sec

Fun Fact:  Lincoln didn’t like to be called Abe.  His friends called him Mr. Lincoln, or simply Lincoln.  Even his wife, Mary, called him Father or Mr. Lincoln.

Salud!