Thursday, June 8

Our first stop of the day was the Air and Space Museum. We had to reserve free time-entry passes in advance for this museum. Once our White House tour was confirmed, I got the timed passes for Thursday morning at 10:00 a.m. when the museum opened.

This was another quick breakfast, grabbing something at Dunkin’. We were debating whether to take an Uber or the Metro into the city, and luckily, where the Dunkin’ was, we were close to the Pentagon City stop, and we could take the yellow line.

The line started moving right at 10:00 a.m., and we were inside within five minutes.

I was pretty impressed with the design and layout of the Wright Brothers exhibit. Here is where I pondered my second possible career change: writing the copy for exhibits.

In the photo on the right, that’s actually the first airplane the Wright Brothers flew in 1903.

Then we headed into the big area with all of the planes hanging from the ceiling. There were a few engines on display, along with various uniforms worn by pilots and flight attendants. We also got to go inside the front of two planes; one of them was from the 1950s.

Part of the first floor and part of the second floor were closed for renovation, and Josh thinks that’s the spaces where more of the planes are. What we were able to walk around and see was pretty cool, but it sucked we were missing out on the whole museum because of the renovations.

The space exhibits were super cool; Josh was quite taken by the planets area.

Once we were done in the Air and Space Museum, we headed to Bullfeathers for lunch. We hopped on the Metro and took it to the Capitol South station. There were a few guys in Nationals gear sitting around us, and one guy said the game for that day was canceled and rescheduled because of the smoke. So we lucked out by going the night before.

We opted to sit inside, and I got chicken tenders and fries while Josh got a tuna melt. The food was good and the service was fast. This restaurant is close to the Capitol, so we saw people dressed up coming in for lunch.

After we finished eating, we got back on the Metro to finish up at the Natual History Museum. This is where we found out I’m as tall as an elephant’s hind leg.

The last half of the second floor that we needed to see included gems and minerals, rocks, the Hope Diamond, bones, and mummies.

The National Gallery of Art was next door, so we stopped in there. It looked like half of the museum was shut down for renovations, so we walked through what was open.I think a lot of the pieces we saw were from 1300–1800.

From there, we walked to the U.S. Capitol. A family was down where we were by the Capitol Reflecting Pool and the dad offered to take a picture of us if we took a picture of them—I left those duties to Josh. It definitely felt hotter that day than Wednesday, so along our walk we bought water bottles to stay hydrated.

We were able to fully walk around the Capitol itself, which was pretty cool. Basically, DC is just a bunch of massive buildings, and I couldn’t get over how big the Capitol was. It was after 4:00 p.m. by the time we walked around the entire building, but we didn’t see anyone important walking around. The next time we go to DC we’ll put in a request again for a Capitol tour.

Across the street is the Supreme Court, which you can walk around and up the steps. That was another cool building to see in person.

Our next stop was Capitol Hill Books, which was about a 20 minute walk from where we were at the Capitol building and Supreme Court.

I think of all the used bookstores I’ve been in so far, this is one of my top favorites. It was three floors of books stacked floor to ceiling and in every nook and cranny. I was surprised to see a table full of new/current books right when we walked in, and the rest of the books were all used.

As you can see in the gallery, I took a few pictures of the handwritten signs that were taped on the bookcases. Some of them were pretty witty. And Josh found a chair on the top floor to sit in while I walked around.

I bought one book, The Final Days by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Seems fitting I’d get a Watergate book while in Washington, DC. I also bought a cute tote bag that had a cartoon drawing of the outside of the building. This proved helpful after to carry the book along with purchases we made at the brewery around town.

For dinner, we were going to Red Bear Brewing Company. We walked to the Eastern Market Metro stop, got on the silver line to Metro Center, and then took the red line out to NoMa-Gallaudet U. We got there maybe before 5:30 p.m, and it was already packed.

We lucked out and got two seats at the counter. For our first round of beers, I got Come Out And Slaaaaaaaay—their Pride month beer that was a wheat ale—and Josh got Dissent—a hazy IPA. Shortly after we got our beers, we ordered food: waffle fries and two grilled chicken sandwiches. They gave us a buzzer, and once our food was ready, we walked over to the pick-up area to get it. When we did that, I could see the entire back bar was full as well.

We got a second round of beers, and we both got Whiney and Briney, a pickle gose. It was pretty good. Before we left, we hit up the merch section. Josh got a t-shirt and I got a glass. Their bear logo looks similar to the bear logo we have at the university, so I wanted to get a beer glass to bring home.

Since this was our last real stop on our trip, and we didn’t want the trip to end, we decided to go to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. It was the last memorial we didn’t get to by that point. We got back on the red line, which was a few minute walk from the brewery, and got off at Metro Center. Then we took the blue line to the Smithsonian and had to walk about 20 minutes from there to the memorial. 

This memorial was just as big as Lincoln’s, but I think I like Lincoln’s statue better. There were a bunch of school groups there, not many as when we saw on Tuesday during our monument tour.

Around 8:30 p.m., we decided to head back to the hotel. We walked to our last Metro ride of the trip and got a bit lost on the way there. The stop we were looking for, L’Enfant Plaza, was actually located within the lower level of a building, and Josh’s Maps app was confused about how to get us there. After a little backtracking, we finally got to the stop and took the yellow line back to the hotel.

Total step count: 24,959

Total mile count: 10.05