...and Monuments

Washington Monument= 3.5 (Craig = 3.5 MacKenzie)
This is the only monument I'm going to rank because you really have to do all the others. Well, you have to see this one too, it's impossible to miss, but you don't have to go up in it. Again, we spent the few extra dollars to get our tickets ahead of time and skip the long morning line. It was fun to go up and see the great views of the city
but it's not necessary. If you don't want to spend the money or wait in line, I wouldn't stress about missing it.

I also don't really understand it as a monument. The other monuments make you remember either the people themselves (Lincoln or those who died in Vietnam) or evoke the ideals for which they stood (Liberty, Equality) but the Washington monument is just a big obelisk.
Since we had both already seen of most the monuments before, we wanted to make it a little different so we did the Washington monument about 7pm then spent the rest of the evening walking around the other monument as the sun set and it got dark. I highly recommend doing this. Instead of being hot and sweaty, it was cool, calm and had amazing views.

Walking around to the Jefferson and FDR memorials was so peaceful.
We even had time to swing by the George Mason Memorial.
I had heard complaints about the new WWII memorial, but I really liked it.
I think overall the war memorials were more moving at night, the statues in the Korean War memorial looked almost real.
Very sobering, even with the tour guides and their flashing light-up umbrellas bustling around you. My pictures aren't that great, but I would rather have good memories than good pictures.