Allison took us to the National Cathedral for Sunday service because she had arranged to meet the church's bell-ringers and they said she could ring their bells after the service!
The service had a patriotic theme since it was almost Memorial Day. We left after the sermon (which was less than 15 minutes - yay!) to meet the bell-ringers. We think we took an elevator up about seven floors after climbing a floor of stairs and then climbed more stairs to get to where they ring the bells. They even took us up more stairs to see the bells themselves.
Allison ringing the bells.
While she was ringing bells, they told Julie and me that we could go out on the (tiny) balcony to see the best view of DC.
They were right. They told me the big white house in the middle of the picture is Vice President Pence's home.
We were really high up. We had no idea how high up we were. I found this on the church's website:
At 64 tons, the Cathedral’s 53-bell Kibbey Carillon is the third-heaviest in the world. The smallest bell weighs 17 pounds, and the heaviest weighs 12 tons and measures more than eight feet in diameter. ... Each of the carillon bells is connected by a taut steel cable to a clavier (keyboard), which is nestled in the tower 15 stories above the nave floor.
Fifteen stories? Holy cow. Glad I didn't realize that before we went up there.
Kind of hard to see in this picture, but the long shutters under the scaffolding are where the bells are. Below that is where the bell-ringers pull the ropes to ring the bells. If you look hard enough, you can see the tiny balcony where we were standing.
After Allison was done ringing the bells we spent time walking through the cathedral. There were so many rooms and different spaces. There was a lot of things we didn't see. Too bad stained glass doesn't photograph well because it was stunning.
This is the War Memorial Chapel built after World War II.
The entrance to the church's garden.
Julie had a convention-related dinner tonight so Allison and I had dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant.
After dinner we stopped by a Mexican restaurant to try their $7.99 Memorial Day special margaritas and Julie met us there before calling it a night and going back to the hotel.
No comments:
Post a Comment