Day 12 - Washington DC - Goodbye to Jessey

Miles Driven: 65 miles

And then there were four...

Today we had to say goodbye to Jessey as he had to fly home and prepare for his finals next week. We were sad to see him go, but I think he was secretly looking forward to being back home in his room and out of that car for a while.

The cheapest flight I could find actually flew out of the Baltimore airport, which was about 30 miles from our hotel. We planned to get there two hours early just to be sure, but after our 5-block walk to the parking garage I began to get a little nervous that we might not make it due to traffic delays. And that was when I realized it was Sunday - thank goodness.

It was really easy to get to the airport and we headed straight for the hourly parking area. The parking garage had signs showing how many spots were available in the garage, but then we also noticed that each row had either three red X's or a number in green with an arrow. These signs actually told you if there were any spots in that particular row so you didn't drive up and down the rows looking for a parking spot - now that's cool! As we drove down the aisle that had spots open, we noticed there was a cable running the length of the row above the cars and each spot had a sensor that could 'see' when a car was parked there. Empty spots had a green light, spots with cars had a red light. This has got to be the most brilliant thing I've seen in a long time. I hope someone puts these in some of the garages back home! (Of course the girls had to test to see if the sensor could see them, and sure enough, if they stood beneath a green light, it would turn red.)

 

The first thing we noticed about the inside of the airport was that it looked completely empty inside. This was a good thing since my girls thought the moving walkways were just about the most fun things they'd ever seen in their lives (Jessey enjoyed them a lot, too), and it was nice to let them enjoy them without having to worry about annoying anyone.

 

There was no one in line at the check-in counter, and I don't think we could see more than ten people at any given time wherever we were in the airport. We got Jessey checked in and his bag checked and then we headed to get some breakfast. We decided on Dunkin' Donuts, which none of us had ever had before (thinking of you Eric!), and it was pretty good!

 

We figured since there was no one around that boarding the plane would be a breeze, so we headed to the security check-in area with about 45 minutes until his flight. And that's when we found all the people in the airport:

 

 

The line was really, really long, but in actuality it took Jessey less than 15 minutes to get through the checkpoint. While he was in line, I decided to book a tour of DC since we had enjoyed our tour of Chicago so much, and based on TripAdvisor reviews, I chose the Big Bus tours, a double-decker red bus with an open-rooftop that had unlimited hop-on, hop-off privileges and four separate routes. We said goodbye to Jessey and left the airport, being sure to notice that the light turned green again when we pulled out of our parking spot.

Even the freeways are beautiful here!

 

When I first drove into DC, I noticed that a sign on one of the roads we used said it was closed on certain days or hours of the day. Later, when we were walking down the street we saw that cars could park in the left lane of the road on Sundays, completely blocking the lane. My directions said "This route has time restrictions". How weird is that? If you look up directions in the morning it may be a completely different route than a few hours later because suddenly you can't drive on that road anymore. Talk about confusing! It seems like the majority of the street signs have a giant "NO" on them, with dozens of little tiny words underneath it about what you can and can't do at certain days and times. We parked our car back in the parking garage and then tried to figure out where we would go to catch the Big Bus. The map wasn't particularly clear so we just started walking towards where I thought the line ran and waited for one to drive by.

I was really surprised when the girl at the bus stop told us that our tickets included 48 hours of bus privileges, free tickets to Madame Tussaud's wax museum, free tickets to the Crime & Punishment museum, and a free cruise on the Potomac River. What a deal! We hopped on the blue line bus and were able to see the White House, all the war memorials, the Washington Monument (which is closed for repairs), and the backside of the Lincoln Memorial. We made a note that we'd have to find some way to see the front side. We then went across the river to Arlington, before looping back around right past the Pentagon. That was pretty cool to see, but illegal to take a picture of. Then we passed the Jefferson Memorial just before we got to the spot where I wanted to get off. On the bus we had been given a pair of headphones and of course we headed straight up to the upper deck. They had a recorded audio track of all the sites as we passed them, and although it was pretty windy, it was an amazing way to see all of the sites.

We headed to the one museum I really wanted to see, the US Holocaust Museum. I talked to the girls a little bit outside, letting them know what the museum was for and what would be inside. I've told them about it before, so they had a little background. The museum had the most amazing area for kids where we followed the story of Daniel, a boy of about 11, who lived through the holocaust. We went to a model of his home and bedroom, learned about his hobbies and how he spent days with his family and friends. In the huge pages of his diary we read his story in his own words of how his town changed as the Jewish stores were closed and the Nazis took over. He talked about how scared he was and how he didn't understand what was happening. Then his family was sent to live in a ghetto and we walked through rooms with big fences like the areas he lived in, imagining what it would have been like to be caged up like that. And finally, his family was sent to a concentration camp where his mother and sister were killed. He talked about his life there, sharing a bunk with 7 other men and working all day and night. It was so well presented, not terrifying, but disturbing and thought-provoking, as it should be, and was a great introduction for the kids to the rest of the museum.

The rest of the museum was presented in chronological order on three floors. It started with the instability in Germany and Hitler's rise to power and ended with the conviction and punishment of the perpetrators involved. The tone was never angry, but was a beautiful representation of the commitment of the museum to make sure that we never forget what happened there and to honor the lives of those lost and the everday people who risked their own lives to help others survive. It opened up the conversation to talk about other similar topics like racism and genocide in general and showed what can happen when fear or feelings of supremacy take hold.

After such a heavy topic, we were ready for some lunch and a little break so we headed to the two Smithsonian museums to see if we could find my hat, and to grab a bite to eat. Sadly, we resolved ourselves to the fact that my hat was gone for good. :(  We had a nice meal in the Museum of Natural History and then C just had  to run upstairs and take a few more pictures of the animals (now that the batteries were charged) before we left.

Photos by C:

We decided to see if we could catch the last cruise boat of the day on the Potomac, so we hailed a cab outside the museum and rode to Georgetown (which apparently means "drink lots of beer and stand around on boats" in some language I don't understand). We got there about 5 minutes before the cruise was scheduled to leave so we hopped on for a ride. The girls thought it was so cool that the boat had bathrooms and a snack bar, but we were all so tired so we couldn't enjoy the ride as much as we probably would another day. It was still fun and was neat to get a different view of the city and see the bridges from the underside, but we were all glad it was only 45 minutes long (A even fell asleep for half the cruise).

 

A was still feeling a bit sleepy and we were ready to call it a day, so we hailed a cab and had it take us back to our hotel for the night.