Sunday, July 15: Our last full day in D.C.! It was time for two of our must-sees: the National Air and Space Museum and the National Archives. Our first stop was the Air and Space Museum, the most-visited museum in the U.S. We were in there for four hours and didn’t even see everything. It has so many important parts of our history: the Wright Brothers’ original airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, the Apollo 11 command module and lunar module, and the list goes on. Since the Museum of American History is closed for renovation, some of its exhibits are on display at the Air and Space Museum. We got to see Lincoln’s top hat, Edison’s light bulb, Washington’s uniform, Jefferson’s desk, and a lot of pop culture artifacts like the Star Wars robots and the ruby slippers and the scarecrow costume from “The Wizard of Oz.”

A short walk brought us to the National Archives. We did not expect that there would be a line to get in. We had to wait a while out in the heat but we finally got in. The first exhibit we saw was all about the school days of the U.S. presidents. Then we went into the main rotunda where all of the documents are kept. It is very dim in the rotunda to protect the very old documents. It was really amazing to be just inches away from the original Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Our last stop was the Museum of Natural History where we saw the Hope Diamond. We were pretty worn out by this time so we hopped back on the Metro, had a quick bite to eat and called it an early night at Steve’s.

Next up: Day 5 – home!