Our day picked up where we left off the day before: back at the monuments.
We made a stop by Iwo Jima, which I had never seen before. To give you an idea of how giant the monument is, I have included this picture of it next to some average-sized people:
As you can see, it is massive. Also, there is a hand on the flag pole that does not belong to any of the other soldiers, which, they say, represents the hand of God.
We made a stop at the World War II monument, which I already went into a lengthy diatribe about when I was in D.C. about a year ago, so I'll spare you.
We were given the rest of the day to explore the Smithsonian Museums. Our first stop was the Holocaust Museum, which I had never been to before, but which my friend Kim recommended highly. One of the reasons that I had never been there before was that one of the times when I was in D.C., a security guard at the museum had just been shot, and they had closed it down.
It was the only museum we went to all day where we had to have tickets to enter. They give you different entrance times to keep people from all showing up at the same time, which is very important because you take an elevator to the top floor and wind your way down. The floors go in chronological order, as you learn how Hitler's political rise affected Jews, how they were exiled, imprisoned, and eventually exterminated. The final floor deals with their release, and the people who hid people during the war.
To say the least, it is intense. We were not allowed to take pictures in the main exhibit, which was probably for the best, as the images of cells, the dioramas of the gas chambers, and hundreds of shoes left behind by people who were killed were haunting. But I am glad we went, and I would encourage anyone else who has some time to visit the Smithsonians to make it a priority.
We had spent over 2 hours in the museum, and, by the time we left, we were hungry. We stopped by a pretzel vendor whose prices were suspiciously absent from her cart. For two bottles of soda and a pretzel, she charged us $10. We didn't care. It was enough to keep us going through two more museums.
Our next stop was the American History Museum. Below is a picture of Archie Bunker's chair from the TV show All in the Family. I have never been a fan of the show. It was off the air before I was born. However, there is a reference to the chair itself in an episode of Gilmore Girls, making it picture-worthy.
One stop we had to make in this museum was here:
Those of you who have seen the movie Julie and Julia will remember that Julia Child's kitchen was donated to the Smithsonian when she left her home in Cambridge, Mass, a few years before she died. It's quite a sight. It is covered in glass, which made it hard to get a good picture. There are displays along one wall of the exhibit of the kitchen gadgets she used. They are pretty incredible.
The most popular exhibit that we saw was the one that housed all the First Ladies' inaugural ball gowns. For some reason, I don't have any pictures of those.
This particular museum also housed the flag which inspired "The Star-Spangled Banner." While we were there, they were unfurling it on the floor below:
Pretty cool, huh?
We also made a brief stop at the Museum of Natural History.
This made me think of Ross Gellar. It is clear that I probably spend too much time watching TV.
We had dinner that night at IHOP, having learned our lesson the day before about getting too adventurous trying local places.
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