DC Museums

Our second day in the area we made our way into DC. There were tons of people at all the museums and monuments, but it wasn't hectic at all. Traffic and parking is another story though. We must have driven around for an hour at one point trying to find some parking with more than a 2 hour time limit. Here are a few photos from that day.


Payton and Austin before our long day of touring museums, walking, walking and more walking.

The capitol building from quite a distance. We did get closer to it, but I forgot to take another picture.

A nice gentleman took this photo of all three of us in front of the Washington Monument. Gregg was at the conference while we toured DC. I wish he could have been there with us, as he knows so much more information about these monuments and history in general, but we made the most of it.

This is "The Castle" as they call it. It is the information center. We had gotten to the area before any of the museums opened, so we hit this place up first while we waited.


Here is the Natural History Museum. We had never visited this museum before & the kids really enjoyed it.

Here are Payton and Austin in front of one of the many skeleton exhibits. They had skeletons of animals there long extinct, most of which I'd never heard of.


This is a "giant land sloth" skeleton. This thing was HUGE, bigger than most of the dinosaurs they had on display. It had huge, thick bones unlike any of the other exhibits.


One of the many dinosaur skeletons. The kids really were amazed with everything at this museum. You seriously need about 3 to 4 hours to make your way though here.

This is the Hope diamond. It was in its own display in the minerals part of the museum. Payton enjoyed all the diamonds and gemstones that were there, along with quite a bit of jewelry.

Next we went to the National Archive. This is where all our nations important documents are kept. Here is the Constitution. We also saw the Declaration of Independence, Magna Carta, Louisiana Purchase and the Emancipation Proclamation. They did not allow flash photography in this building at all, so the photos are not very good.

This is a photo of the rotunda where all these documents are kept. It had beautiful paintings on the walls that I tried to capture in this photo, but without a flash it's just a blur.

This is the Emancipation Proclamation. According to the information beside it, it was signed and sealed in blood.

Just a random building downtown, I thought it's architecture was stunning. This was near the White House. We couldn't get very close to it, so there is no photo. But we did see it, security was very tight everywhere we went.

Later we went to the National Art Museum. I really enjoyed the French paintings and Payton enjoyed the impressionistic stuff. I wish I had gotten more photos of this area, but again, without flash I can't do them justice. This museum is also HUGE, you'd need at least 5 hours to meander your way through all the halls.

I didn't take any photos on our day of shopping, there wasn't anything interesting enough really. I did hit a point that I never thought I'd see. We went to Potomac Mills Outlet Mall and walked forever it seemed. Next, we went to the really good shopping at Tysons Corner, which was HUGE too. We walked the top floor of this mall and my back started to hurt (from all the bags, don't tell Gregg) and the kids feet were sore, so we left without finishing. I have never, in my life, been too tired to shop. Especially when the shopping included some awesome stores that we don't have locally, like Bloomingdale's, Tiffany, Sephora, Lush and Saks, but I just couldn't make the other two floors of Tysons Corner.

Don't worry, we went back the following morning and powered through.