Day 3: Washington, DC 04/06/09

Our Nation's Capital. Amazing. Fun! SO many Smithsonian Museums, all of them FREE. FREE! FREE! I am not kidding. How great is that?

We walked from the house we were staying in to the Metro (fun! I'm a dork) and took the train into DC. Isabel made a passenger laugh when she raised her arms in the air, like one would do on a roller coaster.

We stepped off the train...into rain. BLAH!! Cold cold rain. We hurried into a cafeteria in a building to have a so-so breakfast. Then we were off.

First up, The National Air and Space Museum. Did I mention the being free?




This building was cavernous. It was amazing.



Check out the aerogel, that blue block up there. "The lightest solid ever created, aerogel has a spongelike structure that is 99 percent empty space and only slightly denser than air. "


Look up. See the replica of Sputnik?


Look right. See the airplanes of yore?



Jacob, David and Isabel see the actual plane flown by the Wright Brothers, seen below.




We had a great time checking out all the exhibits.


No matter where we turned, we could escape the rain in random, free museums. This fountain was located in the center of the (free) Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.


We walked the Mall and went to the Washington Monument.




The Capital Building, as seen from the Washington Monument.

Next, we walked, and walked and walked, IN THE COLD RAIN, to the Jefferson Memorial. This was the least fun of the day. The rain made me cranky.

Jake and David had a ball making random references to Fallout 3, a futuristic game about a world after a nuclear fallout, a dystopia of epic proportions, that takes place in Maryland and Washington DC. The goobers kept calling the Jefferson Memorial "Project Purity" and giggling.









One more note about our Monday. We were in DC during the National Cherry Blossom Festival! We were there at blooming! Do you know how rare that is, and how lucky we were to be there? It was a first for all of us, even David, who lived up in that area once. It was like a rain of pink petals, like pink snow flurries. Fantastic.






Click on these pictures to make them bigger.

We rode the train back to the home station, walked back to the house where we had started out 9 hours earlier. We rested for a bit, and then met Niki, David's long-time friend, who lives in MD, at a restaurant for dinner.