Afternoon at the Smithsonian

Back to Monday afternoon in Washington DC…

Around 12:30, we finally broke away from our congressman’s office and hoofed it over to meet my dad at the National Archives.  Before we left for Washington DC, I rented the first “National Treasure” movie, so the kids were pretty pumped to see the real Declaration of Independence.  (Nope, I’m not above using such things to promote their interest in history!)

In any case, we zipped right in, not a line in sight, and were virtually alone with the guards and some of America’s most precious papers.

The Declaration of Independence…

…the Bill of Rights…

…and the Constitution.  (At least, I think that’s correct.  They all kind of look the same in the pictures!)

 

Here are the kids at the entrance to the famous documents rotunda.  I think this is one of those places that everybody should see at least once.  I mean, how cool is it to see Ben Franklin’s original signature?!

While there are thousands of documents on display at the National Archives, we had seen the one that interested us most and decided to head to the Air and Space Museum for the remainder of the afternoon.

We grabbed a quick McDonald’s lunch in the museum food court and then spent the next couple hours looking around.  We took a 30-minute break to watch an IMAX film called “To Fly” and tried to see as much as we could otherwise.  One funny observation…this museum is not above capitalizing on Hollywood either!  Exhibits featured in “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” were prominently signed.

A few highlights were the Wright Brothers exhibit, complete with their original flying machine…

…aircrafts galore…

…and lots of space stuff.

To be perfectly honest, this museum was not my cup of tea, but the rest of my family greatly enjoyed it!

After a couple of hours here, my dad decided to head back to my brother’s apartment, and we decided to spend about 30 minutes taking a blitz tour of the Natural History Museum.  We greeted the famous elephant, dashed to see the Hope diamond, took a swift tour of the stuffed mammals and undersea exhibit, and ended with the dinosaurs.  Whew!

    

By this time, we were hungry and pooped.  However, Jeff had promised the kids a snowball fight, and they had been asking about it nonstop for three days.  I finally just told them that we needed to stop in a quiet area and just get it done with.  So that’s what Jeff and the kids did!  I stepped out of the way, and they whaled on each other for about five minutes.

 

Miraculously, no one took one to the face, and no tears were shed.  And both kids were very, very happy!

We had told my brother and sister-in-law that we would meet them for supper, so we wearily trudged toward the subway and rode over to Foggy Bottom, the area of DC where they were staying.  We found a cleverly-named place called the Froggy Bottom Pub, where we feasted on the evening special (half-price pizzas) and enjoyed great conversation.

Then, it was back to our hotel to rest up for the big graduation (among other things!) the next day.  Fun!