Washington DC Trip: Day Two

We knew the forecast for day two of our trip was going to be dicey-with the morning being rainy and the afternoon a bit sunny and 60.  We decided to get up early, head to the city for breakfast, and then hit the museums while the weather was rough.  The museums open at 10am so we grabbed breakfast and head to American History Museum only to find the line was packed!  We waited (in the rain, blah) for about 45 minutes to get into the museum.  (Pro Tip: if you don't have any bags, you can bypass the line and get in the no bags line which is much shorter.  We wish we had known this and not brought bags with us.)  

The American History Museum had my favorite exhibits and was well worth the wait.  I loved the exhibit about each of the wars and would suggest someone (my dad!) could EASILY spend an entire day in here.  

 It also had an exhibit devoted to the American Presidency which featured a part dedicated to the First Ladies, including their china patterns and gowns.  Had I not been with a boy who wanted nothing to do with this part of the museum, I could have spent a good hour just in this section. 

 Michelle Obama's gown (above) and Laura Bush's grown (below). 

 They had a great exhibit to transpiration which caught this car and train lovers heart. 

 Lunch was a nice break and a chance to visit a restaurant a bit familiar to me!  Our friend Pete used to work at Jaelo, a delicious Spanish Tapas bar owned by Jose Andres.  Rich got the Sangria and we split three tappas plates.  They recommended three per person but we felt like the three between us was the perfect lunch amount. 

 The rest of the afternoon we spent at the Natural History Museum, which thankfully had a much shorter line!  The museums were open till 7:30 on this day which allowed for a bit more of a relaxing stroll. 

 This museum had SO much it actually overwhelmed me!  I'd suggest taking it in chunks if you are lucky enough to have more time in DC and given how short the line was, I think it would do-able to do that. 

 Once the weather cleared up a bit we grabbed the bikes and biked down to the Capital Building. 

 All the biking, metro-ing, and walking were killer.  We were pretty exhausted.

 I mentioned on Day One the biking docks we used to dock our bikes.  This is an example of what the Capital Bike Share Docks look like.  This one by the Washington Monument was packed when we went to dock our bikes thanks to the Kite Festival. 

 It was hard to get a good photo of the tons of kites flying on the mall.  There were food trucks everywhere we grabbed fro-yo and took a seat to enjoy the kites. 

We metro-ed over to Eastern Market and grabbed pizza at Matchbox.

We enjoyed the market area, very diverse and lots of young folks and bars.  We were just too tired to stay out that night after the day we had (getting older ha!)  but would put this part of DC on our list for next time.