continued… We followed a walking trail to The Constitution Gardens. The Gardens felt more like a park than a garden, with grass, lots of trees and a shallow lake in the middle.

That said, it was a lovely setting.

There was a small island in the lake and on it was a Memorial to a the 56 signers of The Declaration of Independence. This was the bridge to the island.

The Memorial. The people in the middle were just entering from the bridge.

Each block of stone had a copy of the signature from the Declaration of Independence. Under the signature was the signer’s name, occupation and city.

The view from the Memorial was pretty.

We went back to the path and continued on. In the photo above, you can see that one of the trees had already had its leaves change to autumn colors. We took a close up of it when we passed it.

It was a short walk east to the National World War II Memorial. We entered through the Atlantic entrance.

The entrance had a view of the fountain in the middle and a bird sculpture overhead. To both the left and right were a series of stone columns that each had a wreath sculpture and the name of a state.

Looking back at the Atlantic side from the middle.

Looking east from the middle. There was a gap in the slabs, an opening for pedestrian traffic, and a view of the Washington Memorial.

View towards the northwest from the middle. Keith reported that the water was cold.

It appeared that the Reflecting Pool ended on the west side of this Memorial, in a small waterfall that fed the fountain. Yes, there was a walkway over the Reflecting Pool — the pedestrians were not splashing in the water.

The Pacific side was nearly symmetrical to the Atlantic side.

The bird statue

We found the California column.

We exited from the Pacific entrance on the south side. Looking back at it.

Though we knew there were other less prominent Memorials around the city, we were pretty sure this was the last major Memorial. We started walking southeast towards the Tidal Basin. We passed what we’d call a garden.

We saw an interesting sign about the cherry trees. In 1910, Japan had sent over 2,000 cherry trees “as a gesture of friendship and goodwill.” However, the trees were infected with insects and nematodes and the USDA destroyed them. This had the potential to become a difficult diplomatic situation, but the US State Department and Japanese authorities smoothed it out. In 1912, Japan sent over 3,000 healthy trees, which were planted shortly after arrival.

We know the Tidal Basin was being renovated, but we were still amazed that they’ve allowed such low branches to grow along such a busy pedestrian walkway.

By the time we’d returned to Kosmos, we’d walked 5.8 miles in total and were tired. We went to dinner at the Yacht Club, in their lovely restaurant on the second floor. The food was good, and in terms of prices, it was the best value for the money of all the restaurants we’d tried on The Wharf. We saw why the Yacht Club members liked to eat here. 

After dinner, we had a quiet night onboard.