Washington DC - Day 1

The first day of Washington was a brilliant sunny day. Don dropped me off to the metro station which took me to center Washington DC and to the smithsonian. Funny enough when Don was talking that I need to go to the national mall, I thought that I'd go shopping! Well as it seems the national Mall is not a shopping mall - it's where you find all the monuments and national museums in the center of the city. I decided to use my first day as efficient as possible and trying to see as many sights and museums as I could. And with the size of these museums -that was not many.

First on my way was the Hirshorn Museum, which was a quick walk through.. a nice museum of art and sculpture.. interesting yes, but still a quick walk through.

Next up to Hirshorn Museum was the national museum of air & space. Now this took a bit longer. The museum itself was a big thing to walk about and I must say I did find it interesting to see the original Wright Brothers plane model, a real size air drone, space shuttles and just planes of all sizes and shapes from throughout the history of people flying. It was also a good reminder how quick the development of the air industry was from the very early stage. When you think about it 1903 the first plane flew and 11 years later in world war 1, airplanes had developed into metallic flying machines.. and to go further - only 40 years after 1957, that the Russians send the first rocket to the space. I never realized how short and fascinating the whole aviation history actually is. Anyway, a great place to visit!

After the aviation museum next in line was the museum of American Indians. I must say I loved all the artifacts and cultural point of view they had brought in with the whole layout and exhibits of this museum. The one thing though that went through my head constantly was: "My mom would've loved to see this". She has a thing for indians - actually build her own tiipii to the front yard and sculpted a totem (she's retired and has time in her hands) and the fact that my sisters kids were helping out helped a lot. Oh.. side rail.. What I'm saying the museum was worthwhile as well.

The next destination for my first day was to go and see the Capitol Building which is located to the far side of the mall. And it truly was a beautifully build building. There were some renovations going on at the same time so I didn't get to see it close up, but close enough!

Last museum for Day 1 was the museum of art - which was a great museum but at this time I was already pretty tired so I kinda just walked it through.. saw an authentic Leonardo Da Vinci and Vincent Van Gogh paintings, which was great.

Funny enough - I thought that I would've at least seen two more museums on my first day but after these four I was "done". So much information to take in. To finish off my day I walked to the fromt of the White House and to the obelisk in the middle (the washington monument) and realized that this was the 2nd Obelisk I've seen close by, the other being in Egypt 2009.

After all this: took the train back, went for a beer and a meal in Fairfax and crashed and burned at 10 pm to sleep. It's hard work being so cultural.