The first two pictures of the Alexandria train station here are quite poor, but I’m running them anyway.  The first photo shows a falcon perched in a tree just outside the building.  (He kinda surprised me by launching himself up from some shrubbery just 12 feet away.)  The picture just doesn’t do him justice.  He was huge.

The second photo shows the headquarters of The Motley Fool, even though you can read its sign in white letters only if you squint.  It was a weird surprise for me as I milled about, waiting for a train that was delayed for three hours.  The Motley Fool website is a favorite for my finance-type friends in the New York metropolitan area.

The structure in the third photo should be recognizable to anyone who takes the metro north — the 333-foot George Washington Masonic National Memorial.  It stands atop Shooter’s Hill, which was considered by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson as a possible site for the nation’s capitol.  It doesn’t date from the Revolutionary period; it was built in 1922.

It’s an odd, foreboding looking building, if you ask me.  Its design seems schizoid — it can’t decide if it wants to be an ornate cathedral or a nondescript, staid looking modern bank.  It was supposedly designed after the legendary Lighthouse of Alexandria in ancient Egypt.