continued… We continued west to the Abraham Lincoln Memorial. As we approached it, we saw that it was under construction.

But we could still go in. A sign said they were building a basement to house a theater, exhibits and store.

The view of the Reflecting Pool and the Washington Memorial from the base of the stairs was lovely.

Per the sign, they started talking about a Memorial shortly after Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Apparently several architectural designs were submitted and rejected prior to this one being approved. Construction began in 1914 and was completed in 1922. The design was supposed to be a “Temple of Democracy” modeled after the Parthenon. Given that he was President during the Civil War, the Memorial had several symbols of national unification: the stone came from six states, representing different regions of the country when he was President, there were 36 columns, representing the number of States that were in the union during his Presidency, and carved into the upper frieze (the part above the columns) were the names of the 48 states that comprised the US at the time the Memorial was completed. The statue was 19-feet tall.

Here was a shot from another angle to help give a sense of the structures height and depth.

One wall was inscribed with the Gettysburg Address.

The other wall had his second inaugural address inscribed. In this shot, we also got some of the artwork on the wall and ceiling. Per the sign, the ceiling had allegorical paintings exploring unity and emancipation.

As we headed out, we saw the view of the Reflection Pool from the top of the stairs was even lovelier than from the ground.

Our next stop was the Albert Einstein Statue, which was not in the National Mall. We headed north to the first street, Constitution Avenue, and crossed to the north side. After a very short walk east, we saw the statue nestled in a courtyard on the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences.

Einstein was a German scientist who revolutionized scientific thought with new concepts of space, time, mass, motion and gravitation. In 1921, he received a Nobel Prize in physics. The statue was 21-feet tall. On the paper were some of his groundbreaking scientific formulas.

The ground below Einstein had a celestial map with etchings and rivets marking the precise astronomical locations of the sun, moon, planets, asteroids, stars, etc as of noon on April 22, 1979 — the day/time the statue was dedicated. The map was 28-feet in diameter and covered 55% of the sky.

We crossed the street south back into the National Mall. It was a short walk east to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which was due north of the Korean War Memorial, on the north side of the Reflection Pond. From the distance, we could see that it was pyramid shaped.

The wall had the names of all the Americans who died or went missing in the Vietnam War etched into it. There were about 58,000 names.

Keith and Eric standing in front of the tallest portion of the wall. As you can see, the names were tightly packed together.

We followed a walking trail through the scenic park-like setting to… To be continued…