Road Trip!
Olessia hadn’t been to DC yet. We took advantage of the labor day weekend and headed out on Friday and arrived in downtown Washington DC in the afternoon. We did a quick walk to the White House and returned back to the hotel for food.
On Saturday, we spent the entire day focused on the Air and Space museum. I would say we did only about half of the museum at the Mall location. We skipped over several exhibits that didn’t interest us. What was definitely interesting was all the artifacts from the Cold War and space race. There were a lot of Soviet Union materials on display, such as space suits, notes, training gear, and more. Olessia was able to read Gagarin’s notes for his speech before the first manned flight into space. Awesome.
After completing the museum at the Mall, we headed over to Dulles airport to visit the rest of the Air and Space collection. We took public transportation and ended up losing about three hours in the process, but it was well worth the trip. They have an amazing collection of air craft on display. I could go on and on. I will stop here and if you want to hear more, contact me.
Sunday, the weather was very nice. Not very humid and not too hot. So we spent the entire day walking the Mall. We visited just about all the memorials and monuments at the Mall. We visited the Hope diamond and all the gems at the Smithsonian Natural History museum. We stopped by the White House again to get some more pictures. Someone pretty important showed up and we had a chance to see the official convoy. We ended the day at the Capitol building where the local symphony was rehearsing for a later performance.
Monday, we were sore from all the walking on Sunday. We had just two goals. The Spy Museum and the Holocaust Museum. We chose to walk and the soreness quickly went away. On the walk, we stopped by Chinatown and walked past Ford’s Theatre. The Spy Museum was AWESOME. Their tag line was something to the affect of “everything in our collection was stolen.” They had a lot of CIA and KGB gear and general info on spying such as how to read satellite photos. The Holocaust Museum was very good as well.
Tuesday, we made a trip to the Russian embassy. It helped having visited the Spy Museum to get all the background history on the Russian embassy. This was the place where my visa was processed as well as Olessia’s paperwork.
After that, we headed out to Ocean City, Maryland and hit the beach. We did some swimming and chilling out in the sun. It was beautiful weather with clear skies, a cool breeze, and a very warm sun. Perfect. After getting our fill of swimming, we hit the boardwalk and found some food. After dinner, we returned to the boardwalk and browsed the shops before returning back to the hotel.
Wednesday, we were sore again from the walking in Ocean City. We left the hotel at an early hour so I could get back in time for my evening calculus class (yuck). Traffic was smooth up till one mile before our exit to our house, were someone wiped out and caused a couple lanes to be shut down.
Overall, an excellent trip. We navigated completely by GPS unit. We even used it while walking to the various sites, such as Ford’s Theatre.
Trip Stats:
Total Time: 5 days
Miles Driven: almost 1000 miles
Travel Time: 5.5 hours from Cleveland to Washington DC. 2.5 hours from DC to Ocean City, Maryland.
Paper Maps Used: None. GPS unit used for the entire drive.
Wireless Networks Found: about 1,700 new networks discovered
States Visited: Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia (drove through PA but not including it here). All of them new to Olessia.