It was about a 15 minute walk - luckily not raining at that point. And we reached the museum about 15 minutes early. We plunked down in the lobby and waited for the doors to open. Here's a pic of the exterior...it's a BIG building.
Once the museum opened, we booked into the gift shop for our standard souvenirs of pressed pennies, a guide book to the complex and a bottle of water. Then it was off to the rotunda to see this guy!
Let's call him Gerry. Then to appease the little kid in both of us it was off to the dinosaur exhibit. Fossils, bones, and skeletons...oh MY! Here are a few of the specimins that caught our eyes and our flashbulbs...the fluorescent lights created some interesting photo effects.
And then a short stop in the Gem Exihibit for those of us that drool at the sight of ginourmous colored stones (me), and rock formation hounds (Thor). An attempt was made to capture a pic of the Hope diamond although the new, temporary setting I thought was way overdone and not that impressive. I mean it's the Hope diamond - dark blue, amazing, stunning...and surrounding it with hundreds of colorless diamonds and then placing it under fluorescent lights just made it....kinda meh. But here it is anyway.
And then after lunch and another hour or so browsing about - we called it a day and went out the opposite entrance toward the Smithsonian Castle and the Capitol Mall. The castle was stunning and I wish we'd had time to poke in...but it started raining pretty heavily and we needed to make a run for it back to our hotel to check out and mosey toward Annapolis.
In the next installment, we'll be in Annapolis and Chesapeake Bay.
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