Visiting Washington, D.C.

We traveled the 30 miles from Annapolis to Washington, D.C. yesterday morning via hailed ride to New Carrollton, MD and then the subway.  My priority was the National Air & Space Museum so we went straight there.  That was sort of a bust as about 1/2 of the museum was closed for renovations.  We still spent about 90 minutes looking at the rest of the displays.  For lunch we walked a few blocks to a line of about 15 food trucks that we had previously spotted.

Then we walked back to the Mall and decided to go in the National Museum of Natural History.  One of the first things we saw there was a rhinoceros gathered from Africa by Theodore Roosevelt.  When writing this post I read a little more about the specifics of that, which was part of the Smithsonian–Roosevelt African Expedition that collected over 11,000 specimens!  We spent a good amount of the time on the animal exhibits but breezed through the mineral exhibits which I think would have been really interesting to spend more time on.  But we had more places to go!

We almost made it to the Washington Monument but then decided to go to the Holocaust Memorial Museum first, which was great.  Then we spent a few minutes with the Washington Monument, Anna walked a little on the grass with her shoes off to give her feet a break, and we checked out the WWII Memorial.  We went down the south side of the reflecting pond as the sun was sinking pretty low about an hour before sunset...very nice.  After an obligatory few photos with the Lincoln Memorial we decided that we didn't want to wait the half hour to see the sun set behind us as we watched from the steps there, so we visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and then went to see the White House (from right where the National Christmas Tree will be).  Then we made the long trip back to the boat and had a late supper!