We visited the Natural History museum in D.C.  we were impressed with the Gem and Mineral collection and with the Dinosaur exhibit, but frankly were disappointed that there was just one mummy and it wasn’t very impressive in the “Egypt” exhibit.  Oh well.

As I said, we were impressed with the Gem and Mineral exhibit.  They had a huge collection of gems and minerals and some items were quite large and beautiful.  And, they have the Hope Diamond on display.  Wow!

Here are some pictures:

A museum in Washington D.C. that Jeff really wanted to visit was the Air and Space museum.  They have a large collection of airplanes and jets and different sections for the different ‘eras’ of flight.  It was very interesting.

In addition to the exhibits, we saw a 25-minute film called “Dark Matter” that talked about…dark matter.  I won’t even try to explain it here, but it was real good and was narrated by Neil DeGrasse Tyson who also narrates the current TV series “Cosmos”.

Here are some pictures:

We walked past the front of the White House just to be able to say we did.  Pennsylvania Ave that runs in front of it is closed to traffic for 2 blocks in either direction so you have to walk!  And, the sidewalk has guards every few feet so you have to walk in the street.  We didn’t get a glimpse of anyone, not that I thought we would.  There was a demonstration going on in the street in front but as it was in a different language we had no idea what was going on with that.

Here are a couple of pictures we took:

Most people know that the Washington monument and the Lincoln monument are along a grassy park-like area in Washington D.C. known as the National Mall with a long rectangular reflecting pool in between them.  What I didn’t realize was that the Veitnam memorial is also on the National Mall, fairly close to the Lincoln monument, and that there is a new monument in the same area for WWII.

The Washington monument recently was covered in scaffolding so repairs could be made from damage caused by an earthquake a few years ago.  We were lucky that the scaffolding has been removed, but we couldn’t go up to or into the monument as repairs are continuing.

The Lincoln monument surprised me with its size.  It’s much larger than I thought it was – Lincoln is about 30 feet high!

The Vietnam memorial seems very plain as you walk up to it – it’s appears to be just a cut dug into the ground with a black marble wall set up.  It’s not until you walk along the wall for a minute or so that you realize that it’s a long list of names on the wall sections and the gravity of how many men died there starts to sink in.  There is an index nearby where you can look up a name and find the section and line within the section where a particular person’s name is.  We saw lots of people looking for specific names and there was a volunteer there talking about the memorial and helping people.

The WWII monument was very pretty.  It’s a circular set of monuments for each state and a large monument at either side, one for “Pacific” and one for “Atlantic”.

The Jefferson memorial is on the other side of the “Tidal Basin”; we didn’t walk to it but we got a good view and Jeff took a few pictures using his telephoto lens.

Here is a map of the National Mall and also pictures we took:

We drove into the city the first time we wanted to visit sights but realized quickly how foolish an idea that was!  The remaining times we went into the city we took a but to the train station and the train into the city.  The train goes underground once it gets into the dense areas and becomes a subway.  It was a great way to get around as there are stops within a couple of blocks of almost all the places we wanted to visit.

There are five subway lines in the city and at the stations where you can transfer from one line to another, the subway tunnels are two-story!  Huge cavernous places!  Here are a couple of pictures of a transfer station:

At Arlington Cemetery we walked around a bit and then visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers.  We didn’t get there at a time to see the changing of the guard, but we did get there to see some presentations of floral wreaths by schoolchildren.  There were three different wreath presentations, each with 4 schoolchildren and a lot of ceremony by the soldiers involved.

Here’s a video we took of the wreath ceremony: (click here)

And, here are pictures we took of the cemetery and the tomb of the unknown soldiers:

We took a day and visited the Arlington Cemetery and also the Iwo Jima monument which is right next door.  Here are pictures of the Iwo Jima monument: