This morning we spent at the tour of the Capital building. Even though we had reservations through our Congressman, there was a lot of waiting around - in line to go through security checks, then inside until it was time for our tour, then in line for the movie before the tour. I think the kids were really tired of waiting around and not really seeing anything. But once the tour started, it was very informational. We had to wear headphones, and the tour guide was able to talk to us through a mike attached to her suit. It really helped to block out all of the background noise. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable, but talked very fast and I think most of it went right over Sam's head. But we gave him the camera and he was content to take pictures. That's one thing I have definitely noticed about this trip - even when the kids are tired or unhappy, they really don't complain too much. Sam will mention his legs hurt and ask how long until we get there, but he does that in the car all the time too. There's never any "I don't want to do that" or similar whining, which is so nice. And Maria just gets quiet when she's tired or hungry - so we do our best to fix that situation when we can. She's really been a trooper - had some trouble with a scab coming off one of her removed warts and bleeding all over her capris pants last night, and she has a cold. She's been taking Sudafed, but I still don't think she's feeling quite like herself. But she never complains and is determined not to let it ruin her vacation.
After the Capital tour, it was lunch time and the best thing to do - to cut back on the amount of walking we had to do - was to just eat at the Smithsonian since we were going to spend the afternoon there anyway. So we paid almost $40 for McDonalds (No, I'm not kidding) and had lunch at the Air and Space Museum. We spent most of our time looking at space stuff - by the time we got to the "air" side the kids were tired, and have seen a lot of similar stuff at the Air Force Museum. After that, we stopped in the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaur bones (Sam's choice) and the American History building to see the entertainment stuff. We were disappointed there wasn't more to that display - like no Seinfeld puffy shirt - but did get to see "Olympic Speed Skater and Ballroom Dancer" Apollo Ohno's gold skates (no ballroom shoes, though). One thing I wanted to see and we didn't was the Hope Diamond - I thought it was in the American History museum, but it was really in the Natural History building, and we were too tired to go back once we figured that out.
Then we headed back to the hotel - we did all of our traveling by subway again - to swim, but of course it started raining on our walk back. So we had dinner first - walked to a local pizza place in Georgetown that was supposed to be good - Pizzeria Paradiso. It was about a mile walk there - but the pizza was so good it was worth it. And we needed the mile walk back to burn off some of those calories! Now Ben has the kids at the pool, and we're hoping for an earlier bedtime for them tonight - even though they slept 10 hours last night they did not want to get up this morning!
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