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Today started as most days on this holiday ... Not as early as we planned.
Today we had decided that we would visit some of the smithsonian museums. The two we targeted were the Air and Space museum and the Natural History Museum.
The Air and Space Museum is huge and hugely popular. We spent about 2.5hrs here. It is quite amazing how many pieces they have in the collection, but we were told that there is actually no more room in that museum for anything and there has been a second air and space collection assembled about 45 minutes from Washington.
The museum is broken down in to a wing dedicated to air travel (ie, planes for commercial and military use) and space travel (including rockets, landing modules and an exploration of space).
After some lunch in a huge McDonalds (23 counters), we did some gift shopping and then headed across the national mall to the museum of natural history. This museum houses lots of fossils, dinosaur bones, skeletons and animals that have undergone taxidermy.
When you enter the museum you are greeted by Henry, a huge elephant, with his trunk raised. We then wandered through time looking at impressions of dinosaurs and collections of fossils and footprints caught in time.
On the ground floor there is also a huge blue whale hanging from the ceiling. It looks so majestic, even without the water around it and the presence of other sealife.
I think possibly the biggest attraction in the building is the hope diamond. This is a blue diamond surround by lots of little diamonds, and it is believed to be cursed. It is worth a huge amount of money (I'm sure there are plenty of people who have attired to have it copied with lesser diamonds!)
After this we wandered along the national Mall, where we were followed by a squirrel that Michael tried to encourage to attack me. We ended up sitting at the Capitol Building, watching the colors change as the sun set on the building (Mick thinks I'm on drugs when I say this).
We then headed off to have some dinner at a pub, went to the sports shop Michael wanted to go to and then ended up at Capitol brewing company to have a drink. Mick was in his element coz the bartender made him a wild turkey that was more alcohol with a dash of coke.
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