28.05 - Day 134 - Washington, DC
Tuesday 28th May - Washington DC (Day 134)
I follow in Kate’s footsteps on my early morning cycle around the Capitol Building and along the mall - with only a few joggers for company. Across the river and skirt around some of Arlington Cemetery, the gardeners at work tending to the lawns and flowers amongst the straight rows of small white gravestones.
I get as far as the Marine Corps War Memorial, a statue replicating a photo of the American flag at Iwo Jima in World War II. Again I’m caught out by the size of it, it’s not life size but twice as big. In front, 5 busloads of Marines are doing the morning drills.
Breakfast is starting a little later and the kids graze slowly so schoolwork in the room starts later. By 11:30, we walked out back towards the Natural History Museum, but stopped next door at the Sculpture Garden for some lunch in front of the inward pointing fountain.
On the far side of the Mall we get to the Air & Space Museum having reserved a spot at 1pm. It’s not an exclusive time slot, the queue is hundreds long, but we move inside quickly.
About half is closed for renovation which in hindsight is not a bad thing because it still takes us 2.5 hrs to get through what is there - from the history of flight with planes hanging from the ceilings and stories of postal deliveries, to a speed room on all forms of transport including an Evil Knievel Motorbike there’s lots for adults and kids to be absorbed by.
The rooms on the Planets and the dome of screens try to convey the scale of space, the space race room even housing Neil Armstrong’s space suit from when he stepped onto the moon (if it really happened). A great museum, no wonder it’s so popular.
Two blocks up we more briefly visit the United States Botanical Garden, the glass covered building home to small sections of varying plants by geographical region. The kids enjoy the kids section of watering the plants and replanting a few flowering plants who surely have a short life span being handled by children multiple times a day.
There are some dark clouds rolling overhead so we scurry home back to the hotel in time for the evening canapes and drinks. In order to slow down the rate at which the kids are wolfing through the snacks (thankfully the M&M’s are all gone) we bring out the playing cared for several hands of President which then extended up to the room before the sofa bed is pulled out again which sits somewhere between a regular bed and a bunk bed on the excitement scale for Sienna and Seb.