Where Are We Sleeping Tonight: Capitol Skyline Hotel, Washington DC After a lot of walking yesterday, we had a very slow morning. Eventually we got a taxi into Chinatown only to discover that it is just a regular area but with all the signs written in Chinese, including McDonalds and Dunkin' Doughnuts. Walking around, we found a shop full of cool clothes and funky things where Clare bought a new lo-mo camera. We had a look at the full lo-mo camera sets but they were just too expensive (cheaper than back home though). As lunch time came around, we looked for a Chinese restaurant that did yum-cha but to no avail. We ended up just picking one at random - Full Kee, where I had their signature brisket dish which was sadly bland and mostly fat :(
Walking by the J Edger Hoover FBI Building, I noticed a red 'X' spray painted on the sidewalk. It was just like the one Agent Mulder painted in an episode of The X Files... co-incidence? Probably... but it was exciting to actually see the building that features so heavily in shows like the X Files and Bones. I overheard a tourist (not one of us) tell his friends that he wanted to see inside, and so he walked in one of the entrances dispute signs saying that entry was forbidden except for FBI business matters - he didn't come out for a few minutes so I would say that based on the look on his face, the security guard had a few words with him...
Our next stop was the National Archives where we got to look at the original Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. It was amazing to see just how many people queue up to see these 'legal documents'. A quick visit to the gift store and now we have copies of the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence - I feel like Nicholas Cage in "National Treasure" :)
We headed over to the Natural History Museum, stopping for a hotdog from a street vender for lunch... it was nothing special... but the museum was huge! I was amazed at how busy it was... I wonder if the Night At The Museum films had anything to do with it... Obviously we had to visit the Australia 'corner' which comprised 3 kangaroos, 2 koalas and a platypus... sigh. They had a video showing how kangaroos hop and the caption on the video was "hippity hop"...
The human evolution section was huge and had skull casts for practically every different stage of evolution. The dinosaur wing had lots of different skeletons and I learned something new - a brontosaurus is no longer called a brontosaurus - it is a Apatosaurus now - when did that happen? Ms Anne Elk had better change her theory...
After enjoying an over priced afternoon tea (a tub of something like Yogo), we crossed over to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum which is totally awesome! The splashdown command modules from the various missions were interesting, especially comparing the sizes of the 1, 2 and 3 man berths, but sadly they are all covered in a protective perspex case. We walked into a full scale mock up of Skylab, before walking through the space history display where we saw numerous mockups of space vehicles and satellites, as well as countless pieces of space used equipment, ranging from the special cameras the astronauts used to take photos on the moon, to zero-gravity food and drink containers. Visiting the larger giftshop, we wondered downstairs and stumbled across the huge Enterprise model from the original Star Trek TV series - it was so cool!
We walked past the funky building that houses the Native American History Museum which by this time was closed for the day. Continuing along The Mall, we saw the wonderful Botanic Gardens on our way to Grant's Memorial and of course, the US Capital Building. We continued walking on to our hotel, passing several photographically wonderful locations.
After 2 days of walking, we chose to stay in and enjoy dinner in the hotel, which was absolutely delectable. The mushroom soup had a little bit too much pepper but the chicken linguini was absolutely devine :) I would definitely recommend this hotel to anyone visiting DC.
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