Day 34-35 - Fredericksburg, VA to Washington DC and back again

Smithsonian Museum of the Native American

Awesome Air and Space Museum!

The capital

So many stairs!

Washington Monument

Elena looking like a dork

The tandem! (I let Elena sit in the front just for this picture... )

The White House!

Our trip to DC was a lot of fun! We ended up taking the train in from Fredericksburg to Union Station. We then walked to our hostel which was a bit grungy but ended up being a fine place to stay with interesting people to meet (in particular a french couple traveling down from Canada). I then grabbed lunch with Alex who came into the city with us, while Elena had a meeting with a friend of a friend of her grandmother's about what it was like to work in the advocacy sector of international development.
Once Elena was done, it was time for Alex to leave to meet up with his cousin and Elena and I sat in Dupont Circle to decide what we wanted to do in DC for the next two days. We ended up walking by the White House (snipers on the roof!) and the Washington Memorial before we went to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. I love Natural History Museums! We saw the hope diamond as well as a bunch of really awesome stuff. We then rented a tandem bike, which was an awesome idea, in order to bike around the Mall and see all the monuments within two hours. We saw the Vietnam Memorial, The Lincoln Monument, the reflecting pool, the Jefferson monument, as some of the highlights, and made a full lap of the Mall. While on the capital end of the Mall we saw an outdoor screen and projector with the lawn in front of it full of people. We returned there after returning the bike and watched 12 Angry Men which is an amazing black and white movie. I really enjoyed it. Shortly after we called it a night and enjoyed meeting and talking with the french couple back at the hostel.
The next day we made a b-line to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, which was probably my favorite museum that we saw there. One of the most interesting things we saw there was the air/space craft used for the first commercial flights to space! The space ship was made out of a cloth with glue to make it stiff and in order to slow it down with out burning up on the way back down it folds in half, mid-flight, which creates enough drag that it slows fast enough to avoid burning up in the atmosphere! After that we were early enough to get tickets for the tour of the Department of Printing and Engraving (the money factory)! We then went to the Smithsonian Museum of the Native American for lunch as we were told it was one of the best places to eat in that area. We were not disappointed! We unfortunately then had to run back to the Department of Printing and Engraving before we could look around in the museum in order to make our tour there. The tour was super interesting. We learned that every president has an engraving done of them when they enter the office in order to be able to put them on currency in the future. The engraving of Obama was pretty neat to see. We then returned to check out of our hostel and then headed back to Fredericksburg.
In Fredericksburg we grabbed dinner at 5 guys which is the east coast equivalent of In and Out. I have to say that I'm still a bigger fan of In and Out.. The rest of the night we pretty much just hung out in Jeremy's Apartment and relaxed.
-Pete