The Smithsonian...

I've been home for 4 days now but I haven't yet finished the task I set myself. That task was to write a travelogue of our adventures on my blog. So over the next few days I'll try to finish that! So let me take you back to Washington DC...

DH and I spent 2 whole days and part of a third day in the Smithsonian. Now I always imagined this museum to be one building with several storeys. In actual fact it is a number of buildings none of which appear to be very high. We went to only 2 of these, The National Museum of American History and the Space and Aeronautics Museum. These seem relatively new buildings especially the former. Some of the highlights for me of the first museum were the display of First Ladies Inaugural Ball gowns, Julia Child’s kitchen, a display on immigrant groups to the US as well as an excellent exhibit on the life of Abraham Lincoln. Good photos were hard to achieve due to the glass in the museum but between us, DH and I got a few.

Some of the gardens between the buildings

The Museum of American History

In the Julia Child's kitchen, we could see people inside the exhibit. people were all asking the same question...'How do we get in there?' The answer was that you don't! The people we could see inside were grad students who were inspecting everything in the exhibit and comparing each item's condition with what it was like 9 years before when the exhibit was set up. I had never seen her cooking show but there were videos of the show running and I realised what a wonderful job that Merryl Streep did in playing Julia. (One of the videos featured Graham Kerr who used to do a cooking show on Aussie TV ages ago)





Julia Child's kitchen

A cast of Abe Lincoln

In the second of the museums that we visited we saw many historical aircraft including the ‘Spirit of St Louis’ which was Lindbergh’s plane, as well as space vehicles such as ‘SkyLab. There were lots of school groups touring the museums which made them super-crowded and impossible to get near some of the more exciting exhibits such as the simulators. The quality of the exhibits was amazing as is the sheer size of the collection on display.

DH and I spent some time in the gift shops of the Smithsonian too! DH had fun trying on hats !