Catching up...July 4th...part 2

At breakfast, we were talking with our waitress and I told her that although we would be in Washington DC by the evening on the 4th, we wouldn't be going down to the Mall to see the fireworks because we probably wouldn't want to get in the crowds.

Well, once we got to the hotel and had a refreshing float in the pool, we decided that it would really be a shame to pass up such a wonderful opportunity as being in DC on our national birthday and not see the official fireworks. So we jumped on the metro down to Washington Monument and joined in the festivities. The fireworks definitely were good, but I'll admit, we did not anticipate the extent of the crowd when it was time to leave. Those people who had trickled in over the last several hours, ALL tried to leave at the same time, including us. We were in a real crush of humanity. Just before we reached the point of no return in entering the metro station, we both agreed we could not take the continuing and thickening confinement. We stepped out of the mainstream for a while, trying to catch a breath. We were prepared to stand, letting the crowds flow around us, but another family decided they had to exit the crowd. We fell in behind them and beat a retreat. We looked for a cab for a very short time and quickly realized that wasn't a realistic option. So we walked to a metro station further away from the crowd and relaxed on a bench until we could go directly onto a train. The train did overcrowd for part of the ride home, but we survived that too.

We agreed that we were glad we had experienced the July 4th celebration in DC, but that we really never wanted to enjoy such an exiting crowd again.