July 7th, 2009 Post Dated
Today we had 3 museums to take a look through, at least that’s what we thought we might get through. We headed off to the Metro station around 9:00 and got on the mall around 9:40 or so. We had been feeling really tired the last couple of days in the morning, partly due to the all the activity and maybe lack of sleep, but I thing mostly because we were crashing due to not having the right kind of energy on board (in our stomachs).
We delayed having breakfast until we got on the mall and quickly found a small McDonalds so that we could have an egg McMuffin each, and believe it or not a diet coke. The sandwich gave us protein and carbs and the diet coke gave us much needed hydration and some caffeine. It ended up working our perfectly, because we felt like we had plenty of energy until lunch time. I’m not sure if this was the real answer but at least the two of us were not as tired as we were the day before where we just dragged through the morning.
After eating we headed off to the Museum of American history where there is plenty to see. We walked through countless exhibits of American war history from the revolution to the current battles going on in Afghanistan and Iraq. The uniforms and weapons of each battle were interesting to look and examine. This first exhibit took us approximately 2 hours to go through. We had to really be specific about what exhibits to see because seeing all of them would take days. Next we went to see to see the original flag that our national anthem “Star Spangled Banner” was written about. It was in a large darkened room on a tilted ground and we could see it through a glass wall.
I, Sarah, was very exited to visit a string quartet of Stradivarius in the instrument room, along with Amati and Guarnerius instruments. We visited Julia Child’s kitchen on the bottom floor. She had donated her kitchen to the Smithsonian and they had the exact layout of her kitchen with all of her pots and pans, gadgets and knives. She said that she had never met a gadget that she didn’t like and loved to collect knives. After that we looked at exhibits of a famous black photographer that were taken before WWII and after which were of excellent quality and poise.
The next museum we visited was the Museum of Natural History. I, Sarah, was interested in the butterfly exhibit, but we arrived too late to get a ticket to enter. We looked at a cool and interesting exhibit on Forensic Science, although we didn’t expect to see it in a museum of natural history. We enjoyed the amazing crystals, tried to see the hope diamond, but the crowds were too great. The life size displays of mammals was very interesting, bats and birds, monkeys, giraffe, lions, tigers, bears, ha ha!!
Today would be a long day: A visit to the White house and WWII, Lincoln, Vietnam and Washington monuments at night. We went to the White house and take pictures – and walked back to the Washington monument, had something to eat and waited for about 30 minutes until dark. Pictures are difficult to do at night without a tripod, but we made it work!
Little did we realize that we walked close to 10 miles. A very busy, interesting and satisfying day!
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