Day 7: Smithsonian Museums

Today the weather was colder and rainy, so we planned to go to some of the Smithsonian museums.  The Smithsonian consists of 19 museums and galleries along with the National Zoo.  We wanted to go to three of them:  The Museum of Natural History, The Museum of American History, and The Air and Space Museum.  These are some of the most popular museums and they line the National Mall.  And all of the Smithsonians are free! 

We started off with Natural History.  Walking into the doors, I felt like I was stepping onto the set of the movie “Night At the Museum”.  It had a similar feel, a big open room lined with big fossils, the exhibits in clearly marked wings.  We knew we didn’t have nearly enough time to see everything; we had agreed to focus on the things we really wanted to experience.  We started off with dinosaurs and fossils:

That progressed to mammals from around the world.  Here’s a fox from the Sahara desert.  Doesn’t he look like our dog Hooch?

This part of the museum had a lot of information about evolution and presented it as fact.

We ended this museum with a look at the Hope Diamond.  This diamond is over 45 carats and it’s really old (I think a BILLION years.  But I am not sure and unable to verify with a quick Google search).  It is blue and very sparkly and beautiful.  I'm not a fan of the necklace it is set in- while it is very pretty, I think it distracts from the actual diamond.  This exhibit had a lot of guards!

Next we went to the American History museum.  It rained a little on us on our way there.  We grabbed a quick lunch in the cafeteria ($11.50 per pound of salad) and then set off to explore.  Mark and I were interested in different things so we decided to split up. 

First I saw Julia Child’s kitchen:

Then I headed to the First Ladies Exhibit.  It took an in-depth look at each of the first ladies and included many of their gowns.  I couldn’t figure out how to turn off the flash on my phone, so please excuse those spots.

Abraham Lincoln’s wife’s gown- she had a tiny waist:

The gowns Lady Byrd Johnson and Pat Nixon wore to the inauguration ball (Lady Byrd's is pretty hot, huh?!):

The gowns Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush wore to the inauguration ball- Nancy was a lot smaller than Barbara and I’m not sure these gowns should have been placed next to each other:

Hillary Clinton’s and Laura Bush’s inauguration gowns:

And Michelle Obama’s gown.  Her designer did not know she had chosen his dress until he saw it on TV:

Next I went to an exhibit about entertainment throughout American history.  Here are some objects of interest.

Slippers from Wizard of Oz- covered in sequins:

The Muppets:

Nastia Liukin’s leotard with the Olympic torch:

Michael Jackson’s hat:

In other exhibits, Mark took pictures of a fallout bomb shelter:

The lunch counter from Greensboro:

And a steel beam from 9/11:

He also saw Lincoln’s top hat but did not get a picture of it.

This museum also had the original flag that inspired the Star Spangled Banner.  Did you know that this has only been our National Anthem since the 1930s?  This flag had 15 stars and 15 stripes, but it is damaged and has some small parts missing.  The original owners of the flag (military generals) would cut off small parts to give as gifts.  The flag was beautiful and took our breath away.  We could not take pictures, but here is the outside of the exhibit:

By this time it was about 3:30, and the museums close at 5:30.  That is not really enough time to do a whole museum, but we decided to see what we could get done at the Air and Space Museum.

This museum has exhibits focusing on things like the use of aviation in WWI and WWII, the Space Race, Space and Art, How do Things Fly, Landing on the Moon, and so on.  There were people EVERYWHERE and we were sort of getting museumed out, so we did not fully examine everything like we might have if we had come earlier in the day.  Plus, I am not a science type of girl.  That stuff is all really boring to me, but Mark loved it.  Just a few pictures from here:

Lots of planes (and lots of people) everywhere:

The Spirit of St. Louis, Charles Lindbergh’s plane that was the first to successfully cross the Atlantic.  I went to Lindbergh Elementary School so remember learning all about this!

A drone, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is being used in the war today:

The coolest thing about the museums is that everything is REAL.  You're not seeing replicas or pictures.  You're seeing real things that shaped America into the country she is today.

After the museums we stopped for happy hour at a place called the Chop House, where we had half price microbrews and a giant piece of chocolate cake.  We freshened up at the hotel and then headed to dinner at an Irish Pub.  It was located in DuPont Circle, a trendy part of town.  The food was decent and the place was popular.  The bars here show CNN on the tvs!  After dinner, we found a place called The Big Hunt.  It was a neat bar; it had lots of beers on tap from very small microbrews across the country- neither Mark or I had ever heard of a single one.  We grabbed a couple of drinks and called it a night.  Only a couple days left!