Washington DC Trip, 2014 - Day 1

Mariah and I decided that it was high time that we took the kids to see some of the sights in our nation's capitol. We knew that a single day wouldn't be enough time to see all the things we wanted to see, so we planned out a 3 day weekend trip.

We left at 7:25 in the morning on Friday, April 25th, and made it to the Staples Mill Amtrak station just in time to board our 8 o'clock train. The train started a little late, but we were soon on our way, and the kids were super excited. They were very impressed by the train and had their faces pressed up against the window watching the scenery roll by. After a while, both of them decided to listen to their music players for a bit, but continued watching out the windows and had a lot of fun pointing out interesting bits of scenery or when another train would speed past.

Of all the things on and about the train that impressed Emma, the highlight of the trip for her had to be the bathroom. When it was time to go, I took her, and she could not stop talking about how cool the bathroom was. "Wow, Daddy! This is SOOO cool! Look at this little sink! Look at this potty!" Too funny.

We arrived in Alexandria around 10:30 am and walked over to the Kings Cross Metro station to head one stop South to our hotel. It was a short walk from there to our Holiday Inn, which was simple, but nice. After checking in and dropping off our stuff, we headed back to the Metro and took the Yellow line up to the Archive station. The kids were enthralled and were practically bouncing out of their seats as they counted each station we stopped at. Ben was enamored with the bright blue lights on the side of the tracks and would call them out each time we passed one.

After reaching our destination it was a few short blocks to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. We decided to start on the ground floor and let the kids into the rotunda, where they were suitably impressed by the massive African elephant that dominates the room.

We decided to head to the hall of mammals first, and we were all blown away by the impressive collection of animals on display. Ben and Emma were like pinballs, bouncing back and forth from display to display, calling out all of the animals that they recognized and gawking at some of the more interesting specimens that they had never heard of before.

Ben is taking a picture here, not playing a game!

 

Next it was on to the Fossils section, where the full size T-Rex skeleton made the kids' jaws drop, literally!

The kids' reaction when they saw...

...THIS!

They both loved examining all of the dinosaur bones, but the place was predictably super crowded, so we made our way quickly through to some of the less famous fossils. The kids were just as impressed by the wooly mammoth and giant ground sloth though, and so was I.

Look at the size of this sloth!
It's almost as big as the mammoth!

 

Emma said this huge dinosaur femur would make a good pillow.

By the time we finished off the fossils, it was well past 1 o'clock. We briefly perused the exhibit on ocean animals, where the giant squid was a hit, and then headed back downstairs for a very expensive lunch in the museum cafe. It was a welcome break as we were all starting to get tired and needed a few minutes to recharge.

After lunch we got back to it and headed upstairs to check out the gems and minerals. The kids were bored at first, as the section we first entered just seemed to have some fairly plain looking rocks, but once I explained that these were meteors from outer space they lit right up and their imaginations were going again.

We browsed through the wing fairly quickly and Ben and Emma both enjoyed seeing all of the crazy types or crystals and rock formations they had.

I am always blown away myself by the staggering variety of colors, shapes, and textures that are possible with these different minerals. It was hard not to take a picture of everything I came across as each seemed more beautiful than the last.

We finally made our way to the true gemstones, and the Hope Diamond, which the kids had been asking about every since we first mentioned it to them weeks ago.

By this time both of the children were running on fumes, especially Emma, but we soldiered on and looked at the skeletons, mummies and insects. Ben and Emma both held a big green caterpillar in the insect section and were delighted at how it tickled their hands.

We finished our visit at the gift shop, and left at around 4:30 pm. A big storm was on it's way and we hurried to the Metro, hoping to beat it back to hotel. The Metro was, unsurprisingly, very crowded with rush hour traffic, but we managed to find some seats for the kids and Mariah and I stood.

It was raining by the time we reached our station, but we had packed our umbrellas and managed not to get too wet as we walked back to the hotel. The kids watched TV for an hour while Mariah and I rested a little. It was time to eat, but still raining, so we had dinner in the hotel restaurant, which unfortunately wasn't very good.

Then it was back up to the room and time to get ready for bed, where we discovered that I had forgotten to back Ben's pajamas! Whoops! Mariah let him wear one of her night shirts, which he had fun dancing around in. We read some quick bedtime stories and then it was lights out.

It's now 10 pm and everyone is asleep but me, typing out my notes of the day's events on the iPad. More adventures to come tomorrow...