Smithsonian

Day 17 - August 13th

Our one full day in Washington was packed with museum visits and sightseeing along the national mall.

We started with the Capitol building, which you can't get very close to now due to security, then moved on to the National Gallery of Art. There are two wings, one containing the old classics and the other housing the more modern art. The modern art was definitely the more interesting - I'm sure the renaissance is important but there are only so many pictures of cherubs and crucifixions I can look at before losing interest.

The next museum stop was the Holocaust Museum, this was much bigger than we expected and ended up taking 3 hours to get round. Even Amy managed to learn something and she's a trained up member of the Holocaust Education Trust.

After the holocaust museum we visited the Washington Monument (the big obelisk), the Lincoln Memorial (the one with the giant statue of him sitting in a chair) and the various war memorials, then back to the Natural History Museum.

We only had an hour there but as we'd already been to the New York Natural History Museum we skipped all the similar exhibits and spent most of the time looking at the huge diamonds and other precious stones that include some of the largest in the world.

We finished the day with dinner at a cajun restaurant near our hotel.