We’ve got to give Lanie credit for being a trouper on this vacation.  Without any sisters as moderating influences, she’s been left to bear the full brunt of Bob’s and my travel style.  Today was another day of miles and miles of walking, punctuated with various monuments, museums, and the occasional snack.

We said goodbye to Kathleen and her lovely family this morning and headed into the city for a couple of days at an airbnb on Capitol Hill.  Normally we avoid driving into cities like the plague, but this time we really couldn’t avoid it.  Some may recall an unfortunate episode last time we were in DC, where we failed to read some signs carefully enough and our car got towed to a random nearby street and we had to wander blindly around until we found it.  The issue was that on certain streets at rush hour, the parking lane gets turned into a travel lane.  This time we reaped the benefit of that system, since we arrived just after rush hour so there was still copious parking right on the National Mall.

We started out with monuments — Washington, World War II, Lincoln, Vietnam, Korea.  All of them were flooded with giant mobs of middle school students, but at least we didn’t run into any of our own town’s middle school students.  There were also a large number of Korean people trying to hand us brochures about Jesus.  We weren’t sure whether they’re always at the Mall, or whether they were there specially because the president of South Korea is visiting this week.  But despite the crowds and the Jesus pamphlets, it’s an inspiring feeling to stand at the feet of Lincoln and read the words of the Gettysburg Address carved in marble on the wall.

Some cool stuff we saw at the American History museum: A piece of the original Woodstock stage, C3PO & R2D2, and Jill Biden’s inauguration outfit complete with matching mask.

With some time left on our meter (and the car still accounted for), we started the round of museums.  The great thing about the museums here is that, in addition to being uniformly stunning, they’re all free — so you can make just a quick visit without feeling like you’re wasting money.  Lanie’s top choices were Natural History and Art, but we decided to make a quick stop at the American History museum as we were passing, since Kathleen had recommended it.  This was a very cool museum!  And not at all what we expected.  We saw the original (huge) flag that inspired the national anthem, and the collection of First Lady dresses.  But most of the other exhibits we saw had to do with pop culture, science, and technology.  They were very well designed to draw you in and we ended up spending a lot more time here than we expected (but still not nearly enough to see everything, which was the theme of all the museums we visited).

After a trek back to the car to refill the meter, we retraced our steps yet again to head to Natural History and Art.  We were running out of steam a bit by this point, so we really didn’t begin to make a dent in all the offerings.  I think it would take a month of daily visits to fully appreciate even one of these museums.  But with our energy and our parking meter both running low, and a notification that our airbnb was ready for us, we headed back to the car and made the fortunately uneventful drive to Capitol Hill.

Our Capitol Hill neighborhood

What a gorgeous neighborhood this is!  Quaint brownstones, colorful townhouses, flowering trees, brick walkways — and we even got a parking space.  An hour or two to relax before meeting our niece Kelsey for dinner was just what we needed.

We met Kelsey at Eastern Market, just a few minutes’ walk from our apartment.  This was another great area, with cute shops and restaurants in a pedestrian-friendly block.  We were sufficiently recovered to stroll around for a while before settling down for some Italian food and later, cookies.  It was an early night, but the death march continues tomorrow.