We awoke to a better Washington DC – Obama must have heard our complaints from the previous day, and had a chat to God who turned on the heat! We hit 24 degrees today, and were finally able to take our jackets off!
Free Breakfast at a hostel can mean two things. Either leftover stale bagel`s from the Bakery across the street. Or fresh, toasted bagels, orange juice (with pulp!) and muffins! Luckily our experience this morning was the latter, and a great way to start the day of museums searching!
Museum fatigue is an international problem, with our last enduring experience being in the Louvre in Paris. You walk in energised, but get taken down a notch the longer the corridors look in the distance!
We decided to only do one museum today so that we didn’t fall into the same trap – but should never have worried. We visited the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, which just like the movie `Night at the Museum`, felt as though it came alive! We loved the mammal exhibit, which bought back great memories from our travels in Africa, and also the `CSI like` Bones displays. This showed peoples skeletons who died from being shot, stabbed, or from Tooth Decay!
Next up we got a bird’s eye view of the city as we took the 70 second elevator ride to the top of the Washington Monument in the middle of the National Mall! Despite now being a slightly cloudy day, the views from the 255 foot structure were incredible, and gave a great perspective of the city!
On returning to the bottom, we continued along the Mall to the reflecting pool with the Lincoln Memorial looking over us in the distance. It was great to see such an iconic piece of land, made even more famous to us Kiwis thanks to the movie Forest Gump!
To finish the day, we did feel it was our duty to thank Obama for turning on such a beautiful day, so made the trek up to Pennsylvania Drive to visit the White House! Unfortunately Obama was too busy to talk, but we did get a glimpse of the White House staff taking the Presidents new dog Bo for a walk on the grounds! I’m sure the dog has no clue how great he has it!
