day twenty | washington dc fourth of july

We headed to the parade on Constitution Avenue and surprisingly it wasn't as thick with people as we thought so we got a good view of the parade.  We stayed for an hour and a half and with no end in sight we decided to leave. It was great but there's only so many marching bands you can watch which is pretty much what the parade had become. 

That night, we headed to the Iwo Jima monument to watch the fireworks in DC from Virginia.  I had done a bit of research and we wanted to avoid the crowds a bit and this apparently did that and also gave you a fantastic view.  Well, one of those were true but the crowds were just as bad.  People were sitting on streets, on top of subway vents, anywhere they could find and the line up into the area where the Iwo Jima monument is was so long we gave it a miss and sat on top of a traffic island instead.  Everyone going into the area was subject to bag searches and helicopters were flying very low all night. There was a lot of security!

Mechelle