National Museum of American History

Remember our Spring Break plans? How we had Plans… how we even had a Reservation… and then how all y’all gave such GREAT advice? How we were going to be in The City for long, long, long hours on Monday and Tuesday?
Uh, Yeah.
*Ahem*

EPIC FAIL.

On Saturday evening, I checked the weather report for NYC. Sunday was supposed to be lovely. Monday was forecast as Thunderstorm City. Tuesday was Rain, only with less Wind. I tried to talk with SuperDad about how we were going to deal with Less Than Ideal Weather, but he was not feeling well and didn’t feel like talking about our trip (in retrospect, this was very strange — I should have been on alert).

Sunday morning arrived and SuperDad checked the weather report that I had left up on the computer screen. Being a country boy at heart, he wondered why in the world would we want to go to a Big City crowded full of People!! in the Rain?? And, Sunday being the only nice day of the week up and down the entire East Coast (or at least, the parts of the East Coast that directly concerned us), why would we want to waste it by being cooped up together — all 6 of us — in the car?! Besides, it was already 10AM and we were sitting at the table eating oatmeal…

[insert Epic SIGH by the one —Yours Truly— who did All Of The Planning for this trip]

Sooooo….

We adjusted our expectations.

We decided like the weather wimps we are to take the beautiful Sunday weather and spend the day at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

LIONS …and…

TIGERS… and…

(Panda) BEARS! Oh, my!

We also spent time with one of SnakeMaster’s favorites — the Komodo Dragon.

___________________________________________________

Monday was the day forecasted to bring wind, rain, and thunderstorms to the mid- and northeast Atlantic coast. Apparently this is much scarier than lions, tigers, and bears –at least the caged kind– because we spent the day at 2 different museums in Washington, D.C.

Sadly, the renown cherry blossoms were pretty much rained down and blown from the trees.

First stop was the International Spy Museum. It was awesome — well worth the price of admission.

No inside photos allowed.

My name is Carol Lui. I’m a 42yo architect from Santa Monica, CA, and I’m on vacation for 12 days in Russia.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

SuperDad wants to go back and play the one hour mystery game someday. SnakeMaster was too young to play and the tickets were all sold out anyway.

The rain stopped (much internal growling done by yours truly) and we trotted over to the other museum.

No, no… not this place —>

This is a photo of the Old Post Office building in Washington, D.C.

Impressive, huh?

But we didn’t go there.

We went here instead! Recently remodeled and ready for some quick exploring.

The National Museum of American History has some wonderful stuff inside… The Star Spangled Banner for instance (which cannot be photographed)…
Although I am pretty sure that George Washington didn’t exactly hang around in a toga.