6 Weeks In The USA And Canada : Second Day In Washington DC

11 September 2014
Weather: 31C and sunny

This morning we stopped at Au Bon Pain again for breakfast only a couple of doors down from The Quincy Hotel. I had a pumpkin Danish and Justin had the pumpkin coffee cake with a pumpkin latte. All this pumpkin is because I wanted to try pumpkin pie while in the states and at this stage it was the closest we could get.

Poster in Au Bon Pain

After breakfast we took the train to Union Station so we would know where to go the next day when we would get the bus to New York City. Then from Union Station we got the metro to L'Enfant and walked a couple of streets to the Air and Space Museum. This museum is the third most visited museum in the world. We cleared the security check which only involved putting your bag on a tray while they scan it and you walk through a metal detector machine. We went to the front desk for a map, exchanged our print out for the IMAX ticket and purchased a ride simulator ticket. We joined the 10:30am tour of the museum our guide Leslie Graham shared many interesting facts and stories with us. He explained that they have to do a 9 month course to become a volunteer guide. He took us too many of the popular attractions - The Apollo Project, Wright Brothers display, early aviation area with the plane flown by Charles Lindbergh and others flown by Amelia Earhart. He talked about the fastest plane which does over Mach 6 and a number of other planes including the Bell-x. We finished off the tour in the space section in front of the moon lander.

Inside the Smithsonian Air and Space Musuem

Smithsonian Air and Space Museum

By this time it was lunch time and McDonald's is right there, hence we tried the bacon haberna ranch burger. Mine had more sauce which was very hot on my tongue. After lunch we went to the IMAX to see the screening of To Fly. This film mostly talked about early flight, with man using hot air balloons and then the barn stormers.

Next stop was the ride simulator, we wanted the F18 Experience but it wasn't displayed as an option so we did the Red Baron. It turns out if we had of requested the one we wanted it would have been screened for us.

We walked around the rest of the museum to find the U-2.

U-2 Bomber

We spent half an hour outside in the 31C humid weather at 2:00pm at the observatory to look at the sun through two different telescopes.

Observatory at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum

Once inside again we visited the planetarium to see the Space and Back show which explained how space travel helped to lead to technology used today from mobiles, navigation devices to heart surgery devices.

Apollo Project

Moon Lander

Once we had finished looking around the museum it was 5:00pm so we found the place where the Washington DC Night Tour started from. This tour was also booked through Viator.com. Since the tour didn't start for another two hours we decided to look around for somewhere to have a drink and have dinner, we found Sport Tavern at the Penn Quarter across the road from the memorial. I chose a salad and Justin went a burger.

Afterwards we sat at the Navy Memorial, the meeting place for the tour and watched the numerous mentally ill people hanging around the memorial. The memorial has an image on the world so we had a look at it and discovered that the only part of Australia showing was Northern Territory and Northern Queensland. A little after 7:00pm the coach arrived, it had American Tours on the side, so I checked that this was our tour. Since we had already met the driver he introduced us to the guide, Andy. Andy had a background in radio, his experience meant that he was very knowledgeable about past and current politics. He was a "squirrel loose", as he had a toy squirrel in his pocket. We visited most of the monuments within the Mall starting at the Capitol Building then the WW II Memorial, Jefferson Monument, Lincoln Memorial, White House, Martin Luther King Jnr Memorial, Korean War Memorial, Vietnam War Memorial and Arlington Cemetery. The tour finished back at the Navy Memorial and we took the metro back to the Quincy Hotel for the night.