DC Day #8

Well it looks like we are done for the day so I thought I would go ahead and post. I'm glad that you are enjoying reading about my trip, but I must tell you I do this so that I will be able to remember when I get ready to scrap it all. LOL We have done so much that we can barely remember what we did and we most certainly can't remember when we did it. We get our days all mixed up. :)

Today was a rainy day in DC. I went to bed around 5:30 yesterday and didn't wake up until around 10 this morning. Can you tell I was exhausted. It was so nice to sleep in this morning. We only had a couple of things on our list of places to go today so we knew we could take our time.

We finally got up and got ready and walked to the Library of Congress. We went on the 11:30 tour. They don't pay tour guides there but have volunteers. Our volunteer was a 79 year old man who has served in the army and worked in DC for a while. When he retired he got bored, so he now gives tours at the library. He was very informative. I learned so much!! He gave us a history of the library. Congress received $5000 to buy books. Not long after they purchased books, the British came and burned the capitol where the library was originally. They lost all the books. Years later after his presidency Thomas Jefferson was poor and needed money. Yes an ex-president was poor. He had a lot of books on a lot of different subjects and offered to sale them to Congress to restart the library and so he could have money. At first Congress only wanted the law books because they didn't think they need to know about other stuff. Jefferson embarrassed them by telling them that by this point they should know how to make a law. They don't need those books, but they do need books on other subjects so that they will understand the subject on which they are making the law. So Congress bought all Jefferson's books.

The library then was heated by fire places. One day someone had lit a fire and the chimney was stopped up so there another fire. They lost almost all of Jefferson's books. Some were saved, but I don't remember how many.

Many years later they outgrew their room at the capitol and that it is when they built the current building that is the Library of Congress aka The Thomas Jefferson Building.

Something else I learned that I thought was interesting was that the President appoints the head library and they are librarian for life. There has only been like 13 librarians. The current head librarian was appointed in 1987 by President Reagan.



Anyways- the building was gorgeous. I was very disappointed though because the main room I wanted pictures of was the reading room. This is of course in a scene from National Treasure two. Well they won't let you take pictures in that room because it will disturb those studying. :(

But we did get to see the things that President Lincoln had in his pocket the night he was assassinated. That was really cool. He had a pocket knife, two pairs of glasses, a handkerchief, and a Confederate five dollar note.


When we finished exploring the Library we went over to the Museum of American Indians. Andrew had lunch there - more Indian food - but not as good as his meal there the other day. And we finished off that museum.

Then we walked next door, in the rain, to the Air and Space Museum where we spent the rest of the afternoon. This place is just too cool. There is a ton of stuff!! I really enjoyed it and so did Drew. Here we had an afternoon snack. Their cafe is a McDonald's so we shared some nuggets and fries. We hung out in there for awhile because it was raining pretty hard at this point and we didn't have an umbrella. It finally let up a little so we headed home.


Now we're just laying around the condo relaxing. Andrew is napping. I however am not sleepy at all, probably because I slept so long last night. :)

Tomorrow's plans are the Naval Observatory and the National Zoo. Saturday morning we are going to Ford's Theatre and them heading home to Arkansas.


This has been an incredibly tiring but incredibly awesome vacation. I have enjoyed it and am glad to be able to say I've been to DC.

Now if only I could find a scrapbook store so I could get some DC paper.