National Mall & Museums

[Part THREE of the trip I took with the twins back east over Spring Break]

On Day 4 of our vacation (Thursday March 28), we headed to Washington D.C. for a full day of sightseeing in the Mall area. Cousin Quinn had to work again, so Lisa was the only one who was able to join us for the day. We rode the commuter train from Manassas to DC that morning, and got in the "quiet" car (NO speaking!!), per Lisa's request (because that's what she rides in on her way to work each morning). Virginia Railway Express has a double decker train, and we sat upstairs since it more room for the 4 of us to sit near each other.

Sorry Lisa--I know it's not the most flattering picture with you! 

(she was eating her breakfast and didn't realize I was taking a pic)

When we arrived at Union Station, we took the DC Circulator bus that drives around the Mall route. We got off at the Hirshhorn first. It wasn't really on my agenda, but we had reserved tickets for the 10:00 time at the Museum of African American History, and we needed to kill a little time that morning, so Lisa suggested we stop there first and then walk to the African American History Museum. The Hirshhorn had some cool artistic exhibits inside and out.

My boys used to have a pumpkin patch called the "Lil Munchkins Patch of Pumpkins"

but they're no longer little, and neither was this giant pumpkin sculpture!

This was a metal structure that when you look up directly

from the bottom, it appears to have the Star of David shapes. 

This is the same structure looking at it from the outside.

The "Big Man" sculpture looks so real!

They weren't very excited to take a picture with the sculpture,

so Lisa suggested they try to make his same face!

The walls in this display were made with textural/fabric scraps.

A view of some of the neighboring museums in the area

One entire floor of the Hirshhorn had an exhibit called "Beat". It was SO cool! The first room you could put your finger under a microscope, and the image displayed in an art arrangement on the entire wall. The next room had pools of water, and you put your finger or hand on an electronic pad, and it records your heart beat, and vibrates it in the water, and then the water image is projected on the wall. That was awesome!!! The last room had lightbulbs, and you put your finger on an electronic device and your current heart rate is seen pulsing through the electricity in the lightbulbs. I loved all the live visuals!!

After we left the Hirshhorn, we headed for our next museum stop. The Mall is such a long area; it felt like we were walking and walking, but it took forever to get anywhere! Lisa showed us a little sculpture garden in between some of the museums that we walked through on our way.

I would've loved to go up in the Washington Monument. The last time I was in DC, it was closed for repair. Unfortunately, it was also closed again this time for some elevator renovations!

The Museum of African American History and Culture is the newest Smithsonian Museum. It opened in 2016 and wasn't even there the last time I went to DC. Because it is so popular, they have timed tickets to help with the traffic flow during the day, and reduce the amount of time waiting in line. I noticed the building on the drive back to Virginia after the Capitals game on Tuesday night, and asked Lisa about it. The shape is so unique from any other building in the area, and I was curious about what it was. It is a giant square with 3 triangular sides encircling it, representing the shape of a crown from historic West Africa, and is covered with bronze-colored metal lattice. Lisa had never been there, but she knew all about it, and as soon as we got back to her house, I looked up getting tickets for us to go on Thursday morning! 

It was an incredible museum experience. It had several tiered levels, and as you go up levels, you move forward through time. The most bottom level (where you start after you take a giant elevator down to it) is the history of how slave trade got started, the next level was the era of segregation and the civil rights movement, and the third level was after the civil rights movement. From there, you're on ground level, and you can go up several more stories, and each level is about a theme: African-American art, African-American athletes, African-Americans in the military, and African-American celebrities. We walked around all 3 of the bottom levels, and picked just a few of the upper levels to tour. It was a heavy experience, and there was a lot of information and amazing artifacts. It really made an impact on me! I highly recommend it.

This was an actual segregated railway car you could walk through

A famous runner in the athletes section

We ate a sack lunch outside the museum on the grass before continuing around the National Mall. Our next destination was the Jefferson Memorial. I hadn't stopped there before, and since the cherry trees were blossoming, I thought it would be the perfect time to see it. In fact, the Cherry Blossom Festival/Kite Festival was going to be that coming weekend on Saturday; it was totally accidental that we were in D.C. during the time the cherry blossoms were in bloom! Once again, we walked and walked and walked! It felt like it took forever, but we finally made it!

Surrounded by the Tidal Basin 

Our feet were tired by this point, so we hopped back on the DC Circulator bus as it came by (we sprinted to make it before it left the stop and we just BARELY made it!). Since we were on the bus, we missed the FDR Memorial, but we got off at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. This was another Memorial I didn't stop at before, and it was the one that made the biggest impact to me this time around--perhaps because I'd just been to the African American History Museum or because the Memorial was new to me or because I've taught the history of this man in my class for years. No matter the reason, I really LOVED this monument!!

We walked over to the Korean War Memorial, which I didn't see last time either. There were bouquets of fresh flowers at it, which impressed me! The memorial was cool--I liked the inscriptions in the sidewalk and stone walls, and the stone figurines emerging from the bushes. 

After that, we walked over to the Lincoln Memorial, which was the most impactful to me on my last trip. This time it felt a little different-- it was much warmer, there were lots more people, and I noticed the inscription on the steps where Martin Luther King gave his famous address that I hadn't seen before!

I captured them both taking pictures of different things: Micah was photographing

the Washington Monument in the distance, and Jonah was capturing the Lincoln

Memorial. I thought it was funny that they're accidentally mirror imaging each other!

We continued our walk, and went by the Vietnam Memorial on our way to catch the next DC Circulator bus again (our feet were pissed, so we missed the World War II Memorial, but we could see its water fountains in the distance). 

We rode the circulator for just a few blocks until our stop at the Museum of Natural History. There was construction going on in one of the wings, and we got there near closing time, so we picked which exhibits we wanted to walk through. We went through the narwhal exhibit (they're actually REAL!!!), as well as the exhibits featuring mammals, oceanic life, sea monsters, dinosaur fossils, insects, ancient Egypt, minerals & gems, and Objects of Wonder.

My favorite mammal (besides my husband, of course!)

The twins in front of the first full-cast whale ever made

A 25-foot long giant squid!

Lisa kissing a Coelacanth (a fish thought extinct from 65 million years ago

during the dinosaur era, but recently found again!)

Micah held this giant grasshopper! Jonah opted out! ;)

We saw a lot of really neat and really creepy insects.

One of the museum workers lets patrons hold 

certain insects/spiders and when we were there,

it was the giant grasshopper that was available. 

The Hope diamond is always a popular display in the gems section, but I

personally loved this rainbow display of minerals!

We left at closing time, and got back on the circulator, which was now PACKED to get back to Union Station. We passed by the Smithsonian Castle (the first Smithsonian building built in the 1800's) and the Capital again (we didn't stop at either one, but they're both landmarks and beautiful sights along the mall).

We stopped for dinner in the food court downstairs in Union station. We got some crepes to go, and ate them on the commuter train back home to Manassas. This time we sat on the lower level in a car other than the "quiet" car!

We were glad to be back home in Manassas that evening! We were exhausted after our full day in the city! Our feet had walked over 8 miles, which surpassed our 7.5 mile day on Tuesday when we were in Baltimore and saw the Capitals game in DC.