Dateline Washington Part 4: The National Cathedral

I took a short break from the conference one morning and hiked up to the National Cathedral--and when I say "up," I'm not kidding. It felt like it was uphill both ways! I posted a couple of pictures of the cathedral in my first trip-related post, but now that I've uploaded all my pics, I can post a few more. The pics below are all of the cathedral itself. If you'd like to see pictures of the surrounding gardens, take a look at my garden blog, Rainy Day Gardening.

Statuary near the south entrance:


Rose window:


Stained glass window:


Got a few thousand extra dollars? Maybe you too can have a memorial sprinkler system!


Gorgeous artwork:


Inside one of the chapels on the lower level:


Unfortunately, I didn't have time to take a tour, so I didn't get to learn about all the incredible features of the cathedral. After I got back, I explored the cathedral web site a bit and learned that there was a contest in the mid-1990s for children to design a feature for the cathedral. The winner? Darth Vader! There's a Darth Vader grotesque on one of the towers; see http://www.cathedral.org/cathedral/discover/darth.shtml for more information.

Bonus question for gothic architecture geeks: What's the difference between a grotesque and a gargoyle?