Christmas Trip-DC

Two years ago, the last time we went to Philadelphia for Christmas, we flew to Washington DC first for a day. That was during Covid, so pretty much all of the museums were closed. It worked out well because we just did all of the outside stuff, which we loved. This year we went back to DC so that we could go to all of the museums that we missed last time. 

Our hotel was really close to the mall, so in the morning we just walked over.

The first museum we went to was the Air and Space Museum. There was a lot of great stuff there. This was the suit Neil Armstrong wore when he walked on the moon!

Looking at some of the original Wright brothers' planes was amazing too.

Andy and Joey were excited about the Star Wars model.

Next up, we went to the American History Museum. This museum was definitely a let down. We were expecting to see things about the Revolutionary War, Civil War, Great Depression, etc. Instead, it was more about pop culture. Here the kids were using a computer program to digitally try on outfits from different eras.

This was a "Price is Right" game where you had to try to guess the prices of items in different time periods.

I was excited to see the ruby red slippers that Judy Garland wore as Dorothy.

They also had some original costumes from Star Wars.

After that museum, we walked around trying to find a place to eat lunch, and ended up going to a food truck. There were tons of food trucks around because there really aren't too many restaurants near the mall. It was a little cold sitting outside, but we made it work.

Our last museum of the day was the Natural History Museum. This museum was great, but we were pretty tired by this point.

We did see a lot of cool things. There was a fascinating area with skeletons of dozens, if not hundreds of animals. Joey found a caiman skeleton, which is his school's mascot.

Ellie and Andy had fun trying to recreate this picture from Thanksgiving.

By the end of the day, we were pretty exhausted. We had logged almost 20,000 steps. We walked back to our hotel, climbed into our beds, and watched Christmas movies on TV for the rest of the evening. It was lovely.