Day 102: Washington D.C., a Final Glimpse (10/22/2010)

Today I woke up at 9:45am, and went down to bring some breakfast up to our room. We slept a tiny bit more, then ate breakfast, and packed up our bags. We were ready just in time to check out at noon. Then we took the shuttle to the metro.

We rode the metro to Union Station today and dropped our luggage off at Club Acela. One of the perks of having first class sleeper tickets is that you get to use Club Acela for free (when you’re at a city that has one).

It was about 1:30pm once we got our bags squared away. I was ready for lunch, so we bought a couple of gyros from the food court. Only after the food arrived did Davin realize he wasn’t hungry yet... so he took his gyro to go.

After lunch, we walked to the Library of Congress. We arrived there about 2:30pm. We admired the architecture and looked through the window into one of the library areas. It seemed pretty nice.



Next we walked toward the Aerospace Museum. We stopped in to look at the Botanical garden on the way. It was nice but it obviously couldn’t compare to the Eden Project in England.


Then we popped into the Aerospace museum.


We admired all the planes, and we were amused by how we had already covered much of the contents by visiting the Kennedy Space Center. It was neat to see the exhibit about the Wright brothers’ original plane. We also enjoyed the digital display showing daily air traffic over the USA by the hour.


When we finished with the Aerospace Museum, we walked back to the National Archives. This time there was a line just to get through security, so we decided to forget visiting the Constitution all together. Been there done that, after all.

We returned to the Natural History Museum. It was about 3:30pm when we arrived, so we had two hours to peruse the exhibits. First we saw the Mammals of the World exhibit. There as an interesting video about the evolution of mammals. Then we visited Human Origins, which was a very interesting exhibit. I especially enjoyed the comparisons of different extinct hominid skulls, and the reconstructions of whole ancient hominid skeletons.

Next we went upstairs and walked quickly through the Gems and Minerals exhibit. We saw the Hope diamond, which was very unimpressive, though a nice color. Also we saw the largest flawless crystal ball in the world.

Lastly, we visited the ancient civilization of Cyprus. That was a good exhibit. I enjoyed looking at all the artifacts. It was interesting to see their culture and technology evolve over thousands of years.

At 5:30pm the museum closed, and we walked back to Union Station. We arrived just as they were calling for our train to board. Perfect timing! We got on board and settled in. Then we ate dinner in the dining car. I had mannicotti, and Davin had clam chowder.

Back in our room, I bullet pointed the last few days, and watched a couple Voyagers. Davin worked on his RPG and watched Voyager as well. I went to bed around midnight.