We were up at 5:30 in the AM to start the day at the beautiful Marriott at Parkview. The buffet breakfast was just the best ever with an omelet chef, lots of fresh fruit and of course bacon, sausage and all typed of tasty pastries as well as hot cakes and waffles. This delicious fare held us until we headed out to an Italian eatery around 6'ish. The food there was great as well and once again the service was unforgettable and our waiter gave us our desserts on the house. He generated a rather nice tip as well as did our female law student the night before at Outback. Everyone here has been polite, friendly and very courteous especially in all of the museums.
Speaking of museums we first headed down to the mall and got there around 9'ish. We found a place on the street to park for free right near the mall. Actually it was in sight of the Washington Monument. We headed down to get in line for the Archives which opened at 10. While the girls held our place in line Patrick and I walked around the area and saw several of the legal buildings; the Justice and the FBI. We then met up for the visit to the archives where we spent another hour or so looking and reading what is barely visible our Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights documents as well as some other public records and mementos from years past.
We then headed out to the Air and Space Museum which seemed to be a favorite of lots of folks. It was rather busy and we spent an hour or so looking at what made us a super power in the world with our military mite and space exploration. The real aircrafts were within this gigantic building, awesome exhibits and we saw only about half that we could actually enter into. We walked about a half a mile or maybe more to our next museum. It was starting to warm up but through out the day the weather was just perfect and in the shade of the beautiful trees it was quite pleasant.
Well despite all of the books and documentaries I've seen on the holocaust I wasn't expecting this complete no holds barred exhibit of the inhumanity by a people against other humans many of which helped that nation become prosperous in the world. What was displayed at the Holocaust Museum will break your heart in so many ways and to think the majority of the Germans were God fearing people and where led down the road by another group of genocide elitist. Wow I never would have imagined this could have happen in a society of rational folks but the times were ripe for that to happen in that day. We must guard against that happening today as we see strains of what the Germans did to turn the common everyday folks against a section of their population. We see some of the divide among the classes today perpetuated by our own gov't in pitting those who don't work against the hard workers, oh well. Hopefully we will never let those in power do that to us.
At times I was in tears and in horror to what happened to not only individual families but even complete towns and villages were completely gone forever except through photos and memorabilia.
We spent 4 hours in this free exhibit and could have spent hours longer as the info was ghastly at times.
We headed out to find a specific restaurant and then afterwards we headed out to Embassy Row section of town
