DC, By Night... Part II

On the trail of DC by night, the next stop was the Martin Luther King Memorial. And the lighting here does seem to echo King's words "Out Of The Mountain Of Despair, A Stone Of Hope"...

A view of the Jefferson Memorial across the Eastern Basin...

A view of the Washington Memorial from King's memorial...

The sculpture looks incredibly detailed....

Passing by the Korean War Veterans Memorial on the way to the Lincoln Memorial... 

The Lincoln Memorial...

The full moon shines on the National Mall...

Yes, it is the Hindu festival of Karva Chauth tonight...

Abe looks on, at the world of today!

The Washington Monument...

Back to Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac, at the Iwo Jima Memorial...

Keeping the flag flying, flying high!

The Five-Sided City...

Before heading for my meeting, I dropped by at the Pentagon City, a shopping mall for a quick lunch...

Driving past the office of the United States Department of Defence, which is known as the Pentagon...

And notice the Air Force Memorial behind the Pentagon...

I had always known of the Pentagon as an impressive and formidable building, but it looked a drab and understated...

Construction on the Pentagon began on September 11, 1941, and the building was dedicated on January 15, 1943. The Pentagon is one of the world's largest office buildings, with an area covering 600,000 square metres, of which 340,000 square metres are used as offices. Despite its size, they say it is possible for a person to walk between any two points in the Pentagon in less than seven minutes....

The Pentagon has five sides, five floors above ground, two basement levels, and five ring corridors per floor with a total of 28.2 kilometres of corridors. The Pentagon also includes a five-acre central plaza, which is shaped like a pentagon and informally known as "ground zero," a nickname originating during the Cold War on the presumption that it would be targeted by the Soviet Union at the outbreak of nuclear war...

And conspiracy theorists claim there is a sinister, Masonic connection to the design of the Pentagon as is the case with much of Washington DC...

A quick bite - a chicken burger, before heading for my afternoon meeting...

A Trip To Arlington..

My next stop on the whirlwind - Arlington, where I have to be from 2 PM onwards till about 6 PM for a meeting...

With time to kill, I did a quick drive through at the Air Force Memorial in Arlington...

The first glimpse from the Uber cab...

It looks fantastic...

The three memorial spires range from 61 metres high to 82 metres high and appear to be soaring...

The design evokes the image of "contrails of the fighters as they peel back in a precision 'bomb burst' manoeuvre"...

The commemorative plaques...

A glimpse of the world's biggest building, the Pentagon behind the trees, and towards the left, the Washington Monument across the Potomac in the District of Columbia...

The dome of the Capitol is also visible...

Heading towards the Arlington National Cemetary...

The cemetery's 253 hectares are home to the dead of the nation's conflicts, beginning with the Civil War, as well as reinterred dead from earlier wars...

The Kennedy brothers,  Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, astronauts from the Apollo 1 Command Module fire mishap and John Glenn, the famous American astronaut are also buried here...

The United States Marine Corps War Memorial (Iwo Jima Memorial) is also located near the Cemetery...

The sculpture depicts six Marines who raised the second replacement United States flag atop Mount Suribachi, in Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945...

The marines depicted here are Marine Sergeant Michael Strank, Corporal Harlon Block, Private First Class Rene Gagnon, Private First Class Ira Hayes, Private First Class Harold Schultz, and Private First Class Franklin Sousley...

The Washington Monument always follows you...