How was it to be there?
Extremely cold, which I think impeded excitement to some extent, but it was great to be there and the commuter train worked out very well for us. Our previous idea was to park at the farthest out Metro station and move in and out on those. I think it might have been far less pleasant if we had ended up with that option. All the stations we passed were hugely overwhelmed. And the only two people I know who had tickets to the closer in sections ended up not getting in because security couldn't handle the numbers. We were just out on the edge of one of the non-ticketed mass groupings on the Mall, watching and listening on a Jumbotron screen. After three hours of standing around trying to stay warm and listening and watching stuff like the Sunday concert on the Jumbotron, it began to get very exciting and the effort felt quite worthwhile. All in all it was a lot of hullabaloo for those final thirty minutes of anticipation but it felt good.
what did you all do afterwards? did you catch the synchronized lawn mowers in the parade?
You basically had to choose one or the other, see the parade or be on the Mall so we did not see or attempt to see the parade, where the security issues were also in effect. I have to assume that section where Obama walked was a highly staged event because the pictures I saw only had a few people lining the streets. I guess the security surrounding this president is understandable. I think the lowest estimates regarding the crowds are the number of people turned away from various checkpoints and prevented from getting either on the Mall or along the parade route. I think there were probably tens of thousands who did not get to see what they came to see. Anyway, after the swearing in we went to the L'Enfant VRE train stop and tried to catch an earlier train out but couldn't, so went to Natural History Museum to warm up, then went back to train station and sort of wormed our way on to an earlier train than we were scheduled for. Which took us to Manassas, from where we drove home, picking up a bottle of Scotch on the way.
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- jimlouis 1-21-2009 3:10 pm
How was it to be there?
- sarah 1-22-2009 5:28 pm [ comments]
Extremely cold, which I think impeded excitement to some extent, but it was great to be there and the commuter train worked out very well for us. Our previous idea was to park at the farthest out Metro station and move in and out on those. I think it might have been far less pleasant if we had ended up with that option. All the stations we passed were hugely overwhelmed. And the only two people I know who had tickets to the closer in sections ended up not getting in because security couldn't handle the numbers. We were just out on the edge of one of the non-ticketed mass groupings on the Mall, watching and listening on a Jumbotron screen. After three hours of standing around trying to stay warm and listening and watching stuff like the Sunday concert on the Jumbotron, it began to get very exciting and the effort felt quite worthwhile. All in all it was a lot of hullabaloo for those final thirty minutes of anticipation but it felt good.
- jimlouis 1-22-2009 7:21 pm [ comments]
what did you all do afterwards? did you catch the synchronized lawn mowers in the parade?
- linda 1-22-2009 9:43 pm [2 comments]
You basically had to choose one or the other, see the parade or be on the Mall so we did not see or attempt to see the parade, where the security issues were also in effect. I have to assume that section where Obama walked was a highly staged event because the pictures I saw only had a few people lining the streets. I guess the security surrounding this president is understandable. I think the lowest estimates regarding the crowds are the number of people turned away from various checkpoints and prevented from getting either on the Mall or along the parade route. I think there were probably tens of thousands who did not get to see what they came to see. Anyway, after the swearing in we went to the L'Enfant VRE train stop and tried to catch an earlier train out but couldn't, so went to Natural History Museum to warm up, then went back to train station and sort of wormed our way on to an earlier train than we were scheduled for. Which took us to Manassas, from where we drove home, picking up a bottle of Scotch on the way.
- jimlouis 1-22-2009 10:19 pm [ comments]