LONDON / PARIS - DAY 1

Shonnie and Mom are always ready for a trip. Shonnie hadn't been out of the country except for Mexico and was wanting to go over seas somewhere. So while they were working their typical Tuesday Night, a great deal for London and Paris came up. It was April and the trip wouldn't happen until September and with Covid restricting the travel industry, they knew there was a good possibility that it could be delayed or cancelled, but they took their chances. Luckily, about a month before the trip, much of Europe opened with stipulations that you be vaccinated and tested while there. So mom wrote out the calendar for the family for the next 10 days and was off!

Since our flight was booked to London out of Washington DC, we decided that we would stay the night and spend the day there to limit the stress of any delayed or cancelled flights that might arise. We flew out of Salt Lake and arrived in Washington DC around 8pm. We were able to take an Uber to our Hotel downtown (Washington Marriott, Metro) where we checked in and quickly headed out for an adventure on motorized scooters. Since it was dark, we weren't sure what to expect until we ran into a security guard who reassured us that we were in the safest area of the United States with 9 different security agencies patrolling the city at all times. So off we went. We started at the Washington Monument and quickly realized we couldn't take our scooters close to the memorials, they would beep at us and stop working altogether. We then headed to the World War II Memorial where we were able to find the State of Utah's monument. As we headed down to the Lincoln Memorial, we were blasted by thousands of bugs by the large pond leading up to the monument. Luckily we only swallowed a couple. We took turns heading up the stairs to see the Lincoln statue while the other waited behind to watch the scooters. The views of the night lights on each memorial were amazing. We passed the Whitehouse, unfortunately the lights had just turned off at 11:00 so we just missed seeing it lit up. We headed towards the U.S. Capitol and passed by the US Post Office, Archives and National Museum. It was nearly 1am when we finally decided to call it quits, but well worth the late night.