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Published: October 31st 2010
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DAY 29
We got up this morning to the alarm at about 6am. We headed down for buffet breakfast shortly thereafter and it wasn’t half bad. After finishing brekky we headed out to take some photos of the monuments in the National Mall and surrounds. We stopped off at the Washington Monument, White House, Lafayette Park, World War II Monument, Franklin Roosevelt Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial. Once it hit 10am we started our tours of the Smithsonian Museums. The best thing about all the museums of the Smithsonian are that they are all free!! You can walk in and walk out as many times as you like and all you need to do is pass security. Our first stop was the American History Museum. We started on the second floor and looked at the star spangled banner. They have a huge American flag that was made a long long time ago, it is under dim light to protect it so couldn’t take photos, but its pretty cool. We then had a look at changing households over the years, different communities within USA and how they have evolved over time and first ladies of the Smithsonian which exhibited outfits worn by
some of the first ladies. Next we went up to the 3rd floor where we got to see a very big exhibit called the price of freedom which looked at all of the wars and the leaders involved in the wars since America declared independence. It was quite interesting, but we just didn’t have the time to do it in detail. We had a look at the Abraham Lincoln exhibit which displayed his top hat and suit and a lot of different things from his life. We also got to have a look at the treasures of pop culture which included Dorothy’s slippers from Wizard of Oz and Fonzies jacket from Happy Days. We then made our way down to the bottom floor to quickly look at power machinery, America on the move - which details some of the history and freeing of the slaves, science in America and invention at play.
From here we really had to make a move to see the rest of the museums. Next museum on our stop was the American Natural History Museum. Here we got to see mammals, human origins, ocean displays, African cultures, dinosaurs, fossils, gems and minerals, the hope diamond, earth/moon/meteorites,
reptiles and bones. My favourite display here was written in bones, which had some bones on display that had suffered trauma like gunshot wounds or fractures or burning and the captions showed you how they died. They also had a full skeleton on display that had been murdered due to stabbing and burning, and they showed you were the marks on the ribs were. It was pretty interesting because i love reading the forensic anthropology crime novels and watching bones on TV. We also walked through the insect zoo which Scott loved as he got to hold some insects - a cockroach and a green caterpillar of some kind. It was a pretty cool museum, and we spent longer here than we had time for as we still had one stop to go - the Air and Space Museum.
We got to Air and Space at about 4pm, which only left us 90min to look at everything that we wanted to. Headed upstairs and saw a lot of different aircraft and planes and war planes. Also saw exploring the planets which had a lot of information about all of the planets in the solar system. We saw the wright brothers
plane, all of the Apollo paraphernalia which was pretty awesome, flight in the arts - which was photography of all the different planets and their surfaces - the photos were amazing. Also looked at pushing the limits, Apollo 11 command console, looking at earth, exploring the universe, moving beyond earth and how things fly. We ran out of time at this museum and if we have any more spare time we will come back. The how things fly exhibit was pretty cool as it was interactive and had a few cool things for you to do.
So after being on our feet walking around for 10 ½ hours we headed back to the hotel. We had a brief rest and looked up a couple of things online before heading out to Capitol City Brewery for dinner. We found our way to the train station, but had to ask for directions to the subway. Once we found it managed to buy our train tickets and find the platform. The subway system is pretty cool and it goes down like 2 stations deep. The train arrived really quickly and we got off at Metro Station and walked a block to the brewery.
It was really busy in there and we had to wait for a table which was fine. We grabbed a beer and started to chat to a guy at the bar who was from Tennessee and had driven down for the Rally for Sanity the following day. It is amazing that so many people have come down for it. It will be massive! After no time at all we got buzzed for our table and sat down. We ordered some more beers and our dinner. We had black and tan battered onion rings with ranch dipping sauce for a started and i got the veggie burger for main and Scott got a meat burger. Food was really nice and so were the onion rings. The place was really packed for a Friday night but had good atmosphere. After 4 beers, 2 burgers and onion rings all it cost was $60....crazy!! We left the restaurant around 8.30 and headed to the metro station. On the way out we held the door open for someone in a wheelchair and the lady commented that we mustn’t be from around here as no-one holds the door open for them usually - which is just
crazy! They weren’t locals either they had come down for the rally too! As we approached the metro station, we saw a lot of ambulances and police, but couldn’t quite figure out why, but we headed down the escalators to the station anyway. On the way down we saw the ambulance officers and fire brigade carrying a man up the escalator on a stretcher. He was really bloody and looked like he’d been in an explosion or something. As we got to the bottom of the escalator we got told the station was closed and we’d have to go somewhere else. We couldn’t believe that the escalators were still operating and not blocked off especially in a city where they have emergency situations all the time. So we walked to the next station only to find it had been closed off too, but still not blocked off. We decided we’d just walk back to the hotel and work off some of dinner! Only took around 20minutes, so wasn’t too bad. Got back to the hotel, pretty much went straight to bed after posting some blogs as we were buggered from all the walking today.
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Mum
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What a day
Wow, you certainly fit a lot in a day. Glad to see the photo of the "right whale" in the History Museum, gathering it will be a northern right whale. Our whales are now gone for the season. Looking forward to your continuing travelogues. Luv Mum