quacking through DC

For my first official tour of DC, I decided to fork over $32 and go on the DC Duck Tour. I've seen these amphibious vehicles in Boston and San Francisco, and thought that I might as well experience DC on land and water! And if you're wondering if you can buy your own duckmobile, I think that is a possibility.

Here's my tour duck -- the Lucky Duck!

I thought this was a pretty cool reflection of the entire duckmobile.
This is Union Station, the starting/ending point of the tour. There's a statute of Christopher Columbus in front of Union Station, and the three flags represent the three ships that Columbus sailed over the ocean blue.
Below is a fuzzy image of the White House because we practically whizzed by (security won't allow lingering).
This is the Atlantic part of the WWII Memorial...I couldn't fit in the Pacific side.
Here's the Lincoln Memorial from a distance and the Reflection Pool.
The WWI Memorial, which rumor has it that you can get married under this memorial.
The Arlington, Virginia skyline (my new home for the next 9 months).
Our tour guide, Captain Mike, told us this was the most exciting part of the tour -- the MERGE. It was really death defying as cars were just zooming up into the merge. Since I was sitting on the window side, I did fear for my life for a few seconds.
At this point in the tour, we're in the Potomac River and Captain Mike is allowing some photo ops for anyone who wants to try driving the duck truck. Secretly, I wanted to go up and drive the duck, but I didn't want to be the only big kid doing so.
The Washington Monument view from the Potomac River.
A plane taking off from Reagan National Airport.
The Jefferson Memorial (I hear this one should be visited at nighttime).
The Castle at the Smithsonian -- I need to get started on visiting the numerous museums.
The Capital Building. The House and Senate are not in session because there are no flags flying over either of the houses.
And this is me with a quacker in my mouth. The quacker was a souvenir of the tour.
Captain Mike was both funny and informative in his narratives of the sites he took us to. He opened up the tour with:

"We have four different tour routes that we can possibly take. The A Tour goes down Constitution. The B Tour goes down Pennsylvania. The C Tour goes down Louisiana. And we lucky ducks get to go on the Deeee Tour!"

Get it? At some points the jokes got corny but it was all fun in the end. It was a great way to get a quick sample of all the sites one needs to visit while in DC. I would highly recommend it to anyone coming for a visit!