Washington, DC- Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2013

We started in Annapolis again this morning. Julie wanted to get some questions answered for her trip with her students, so we started at the Visitors' Center, and also stopped at the parking lot by the Naval Academy's football stadium. Then we drove to New Carrollton, where we learned we could park and pick up the metro into Washington.

We took the orange line in to L'Enfant Plaza. Julie learned she'll have to figure about an hour and a half to bring her students from the hotel to the Mall area. For us, it was getting close to 11:00, and we decided to have lunch. We ate at a Five Guys, because Julie had heard that they have the greatest hamburgers in the world. Anna was more impressed with the beverage machine that offered seemingly countless favors from a touch screen. She wanted to try them all.

We took the subway one more stop and got off at Smithsonian Station. We went to "The Castle" for a potty break and for information for Julie. Anna had hopes to see the Declaration of Independence, since she had just studied it in school, so our first real stop was the National Archives. We went through security quickly, and dallied some in the gift shop, but when we finally went up to the Rotunda there was virtually no wait. Anna and Emma got a close look at the Declaration (the writing is so faint that it is almost faded away, but it is still recognizable), as well as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We looked at the exhibits in back to, we included a copy of the Magna Carta and an interactive at careen that let Emma try designing alternatives to the National Seal, one with a turkey on it and one with a bear.

From the Archives, we crossed to the Air and Space Museum. Anna and Emma touched the moon rock (check) and saw the space modules (check). We re-energized with a snack, and then let them pick our route. We saw the first airplane that flew (check), but it's in a relatively new place from where it used to be. The girls got their picture taken with Amelia Earhart's trans-Atlantic plane, which they knew from the Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian movie. We shopped at the gift shop, of course, and saw the original Enterprise from Star Trek. Anna bought some astronaut ice cream, which we all sampled after we left. Emma said, "It tastes like ice cream, except there's no ice."

Julie then took us across the Mall to Pennsylvania Avenue (check), where we went to the Old Post Office. It was a new site for all of us. Inside is shopping area, but it was really quiet. A park ranger showed us the way to the elevators which took us up into the tower with a pretty good view of the city. We could see a nice view of the Capitol, to the east down Pennsylvania Avenue. We caught a glimpse of the White House (check), which was to our west. (Anna wanted to see two things today- the Declaration and the White House. This ended up being the closest that we got to the White House, but she could see it anyway.) We could see Jefferson's Memorial and we saw Lincoln's too (check, check), and could see all the way across the river to Arlington and the Pentagon (check). Julie decided that the Old Post Office will be the first stop for her students, partly to give them this overview of the city, and partly because it opens an hour earlier than the Smithsonians do.

We finished the day at the nearby Museum of Natural History. Naturally, we saw a dinosaur (check). It seemed like we were going backwards through the museum, but we only had about an hour before closing time. We worked our way through the dinosaurs and other fossils. The girls spent some time looking at the mammals and then at the Hope diamond and other gems.

By then, we were all feeling pretty tired. The plan was supposed to be to catch dinner in DC, and then take a bus tour of the monuments at night. We didn't have any arrangements for a bus, however, and Julie's was having no luck with her attempts to make them during the day, since we're here in the off season. Scott's coming back to see them next week with the eighth graders, Julie will be back in a month, Anna will probably be on the eighth grade trip next year, and Emma was the first to say that she wanted to go back to the hotel. We reluctantly decided to take the metro back to our car and make our way back to Annapolis. At least we got to see some of them in the distance.