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Published: October 22nd 2011
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Today was our first full day in Washington DC, so we were up fairly early at around 8:30am to make the most of the day! We put on some clothes and went downstairs to get some breakfast, as we weren't too sure what time it opened/closed (the woman that checked us in wasn't too sure, as she was just a temp and had only been there a couple of hours - she didn't even know where the elevator was!). Breakfast was as basic as you can get really - some bread, a few different types of jam, some butter and a toaster! We had a few rounds of toast each with jam, then went back up to the room where we got properly washed and dressed.
We thought that we should start our Washington sightseeing with the most famous landmark in the city - the White House of course! We knew that the White House was just a few blocks down the road from the hostel - one of the main reasons that we booked it - so we set off down the street. We reached a row of houses, where we knew that we just had to turn left
and go around them to reach the White House. On our way around we spotted the Washington Monument in the distance, which is probably another one of the top sights to see for tourists. We took a couple of pictures of it from a distance, deciding we would go and get a better look at it after we had seen the White House.
Sure enough, after skirting around the row of houses we saw, we came to an area that was sectioned off from the rest of the road so that regular traffic couldn't pass by, and saw the gates that surround the grounds of the famous Presidential home. You can't actually get very close to the building itself - duh! - but you can get some pretty good shots through the fence, so that's what we did. There's not much else to say really, although it's a famous and pretty nice looking house, at the end of the day it's simply a building! We did spot a couple of people actually on the roof, we assume they were part of the secret service on security detail (the picture almost looks like they have a sniper rifle/scout tripod).
Once we'd spent a few minutes near the White House taking pictures, we took the short walk across the park to the Washington Monument. For those that don't know, it's basically a huge, stone obilisque that obviously has some sort of meaning/symbolism - what the actual meaning IS, however, we're not entirely sure! :S It was pretty sunny/warm today so we sat down near the grass beside the monument and chilled for a while, taking a few more pictures in the process. Whilst relaxing, we browsed our map to see how close the local attractions were. Pretty much all of the history/space/science museums in Washington are run by the Smithsonian Institution (you may know this group of museums from Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian). The good thing about the Smithsonian Institution is that they insist on keeping their attractions completely free - which is perfect on our budget! We decided that we would check out the Natural History Museum - pretty much the 3rd Natural History Musuem we've been in now, lol - as it was just a short walk down the street from the monument.
As we were walking towards the museum we got
a little bit peckish so stopped at a street vendor to grab a snack. Emma had an egg roll (which was massive, but unfortunately she didn't really like it too much and so ended up leaving half of it) and Craig had a Polish Sausage Hot Dog. We ate them fairly quickly and carried on towards the museum. A few metres down the road, we walked past another street vendor and must have had a craving for icecream at the same time (it was quite a nice, sunny day after all), so Craig got a '2-Ball Screwball' (a screwball with TWO chewing gums, win!), with Emma having a 'Chocolate Eclair' icecream (which was basically chocolate/fudge icecream in the middle, with regular vanilla icecream around the outside, which was seemily dipped in crumbs from a cake!). Once finished, we carried on and finally reached the entrance by about 1:00pm-ish.
To be honest, the museum was very similar to the others that we have visited, so we won't go into a lot of detail (the pictures speak for themselves), but we'll sum it up quickly. Basically, it's full to the rafters with the usual stuff; Egyptian, African and some Chinese artifacts,
dinosaurs, extinct animals, stuffed (dead) animals, and live butterflies, insects and plants. What stood out a little was their huge collection of human-evolution displays. They have an entire section of the museum dedicated to bones and skeletons belonging to species that were the beginnings of what eventually evolved to become the modern human. We also got to see what Emma looked like as an early human (a "Homo floresiensis" to be precise!), the result of which is pretty hilarious - see picture! There was also a small area dedicated to the rescue of the chilean miners last year, with the capsule which carried them all to the surface on display there.
They also had the 'National Gem Archive' which was a section that housed hundreds of the worlds most precious and expensive gemstones and jewellery. Some of the pieces on display were just crazy, with pure/flawless diamonds that were incredibly large, and even the famous 'Hope Diamond' set in an exquisite necklace. We can't even imagine how much the display was worth in total; probably millions and millions of dollars. Upon exiting from the gem display, we entered a precious stone/mineral section with things like topaz, copper/iron/silver/gold ore in
their raw forms (one piece of gold weighed over 2.5kg!). All-in-all, we spent around 3 hours at the museum, exiting the building at around 4:30pm.
We walked back over towards the White House (passing the National Christmas Tree as we went - although it is still a little too early for it to have any decorations on it, so it was essentially just a tree), and found the street that we needed to walk back down to get back to our hostel. On the way back, we stopped off at a CVS pharmacy for something to eat for our tea, with Craig buying a microwaveable chicken dinner and Emma getting some chilli and rice. We returned to the room, and as it was around 5pm by this point, Craig had his dinner first while Emma played on her DS. We then went downstairs with the netbook to check our Facebooks and emails, and Craig remained down in the lobby watching YouTube videos while Emma came back to the room to eat her tea and play her DS some more. Eventually, Craig came back up to the room and we spent the rest of the night watching TV and playing
the DS.
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