Patriotic Presidents Day!

Warning, this blogpost is probably going to be long, but I promise lots of pictures AND as an added bonus, a hilarious video!

We'll start with yesterday, Sunday afternoon, we finally made it to the Newseum. The last time we went it was too crowded to even get in and it has weird hours, but yesterday we made it! You may be asking yourself, what's a Newseum? When I tried to tell my mom over the phone that was where we went, she asked, which museum? It's the museum of news and journalism. And its HUGE! We spent several hours and easily could have spent a few more. They have all sorts of interesting stuff. Including: Pieces of the Berlin Wall

 A handwritten poem by Sadaam Hussein from prison

 The drive shaft from the Ryder Truck involved in the OKC bombing

 These were all part of their G-men/FBI exhibit. They had some other cool things BUT I was incredibly creeped out because they had the UNAbomber's actual cabin.... yikes! Not only did they have the actual cabin, but pictures of what it looked liked with all of the stuff inside. Ick!

One of their biggest exhibits right now is on Katrina. They have an entire hallway with all of the newspapers from that week chronicling the process. Here is a picture of the side of someone's house and what they wrote to keep out looters. I know it was a serious problem, but this was hilarious!

 They also have one of the best views of the Capitol in DC!

 And a picture of a Gutenburg Bible

They have another HUGE exhibit that covers the history of newspapers. They have ones back to the 18th century all the way to present. It's incredibly interesting to see how they have evolved. Even just back to the 60s they had pictures in the newspaper that just would NOT be okay today. Example: picture of Bobby Kennedy after he had been shot, laying on the ground dying. Really? Wow. Here were a few we enjoyed:

 Here is the Watergate door, subsequently followed by the news headline about Nixon resigning...

One of the other big exhibits is their one of 9/11. This is the wall of all of the newspapers from around the world with their headlines

 They also have the radio tower from the top of the World Trade Center. Sorry I don't have more pictures from this exhibit, but the pictures and videos were incredibly difficult to look at. They had one picture of a man who had jumped from one of the towers plummeting to the ground. It was awful.

My personal favorite exhibit was one on freedom of the press around the world. Below is a picture of the map. Green meant free press, yellow was partly free and red meant not free at all. Of course all of the areas I am interested in are red... figures.

They had a cartoon section that Caleb enjoyed. It's hard to read but this one was pretty funny.

BUT, the exhibit I was looking forward to the most all day was exhibit called "First Dogs." We were pretty disappointed with the actual dogs display, but it was fun to read about other White House pets.... racoons, goats, mockingbirds, peacocks, etc. The best news is.... there has never been a First Pomeranian, so Scarlett can be the first!

These are just a FEW of the exhibits we enjoyed. At the end of the day we got to watch a 4-D video, but it was surprisingly disappointing. For the grand finale, they have a place where you can pretend to be a live news reporter. It took a little coaxing, but I got Caleb to record a video with me - part of the deal was he got to pick our topic- and he picked, of course, a hurricane... Click on the video below and you can watch our live coverage of a hurricane haha

That's all for Sunday! Today, we started out our President's Day early by heading to Ford's Theater.

 We got to see the theater, museum and hear a ranger talk, but unfortunately the house across the street where he actually died is under renovation, so we couldn't go in. It currently looks like this

To be honest, we weren't expecting too much from Ford's Theater. The ticket only cost $1.50 so... But the museum was actually AMAZING! They had all sorts of great stuff, including:

John Wilkes Booth's gun that he shot Lincoln with

 The boot he had cut off when the doctor helped with his broken leg. WHICH, we found out that him breaking his leg when he jumped on the stage is a myth. His horse actually fell on him during his escape and that is how he broke his leg. Interesting huh?

 A Civil War era quilt with famous signatures on it...

 Like Abraham Lincoln

 Andrew Johnson

 Here are the clothes that Lincoln was wearing when he died, except for the shirt

 The pillow he died on (kinda creepy)

 The door and piece of wood Booth used to wedge the door so no one could come in while he shot Lincoln

 We have to be honest and say it is a HUGE letdown when you walk into the theater and they tell you the entire thing is a replica. After Lincoln was shot, the place was shut down and then eventually turned into office space. They renovated it in the 1960s to make it like it would have been. It looks cool but is disappointing that it isn't real.

 The suite where Lincoln was shot

Park Ranger Roger gave us a 20 minute presentation that was interesting to say the least. He.Spoke.In.Slow.Motion.With.Long.Pauses. It was bizarre and I had to keep myself from laughing. Caleb thinks he had a photographic memory and was just reading it in his mind instead of having actual expression. He also said something that highly offended Caleb. In discussing the Civil War, he discussed how the Southern States, "Or as some might call them, the Confederacy." We both just looked at each other. Who doesn't refer to the South as the Confederacy? Weird. And then he took it a step further and talked about the rebels being at was with "OUR" country. Ouch. Tough one for a Southern boy to take. I'm afraid Park Ranger Roger will go down in infamy for that one.

After the theater, we grabbed a quick lunch in Chinatown before heading towards the Capitol. WMATA is stupid and thinks that holidays are the best day for "regularly scheduled track maintenance" and close down the metro lines. It made navigating town a bit tricky today. So we ended up having to ride to Union Station. We grabbed some gelato and walked to the Capitol for our tour. Here is a quick picture of Union Station

 And then we were off to the Capitol! Which was full of visitors on the holiday...

 The first stop on our tour was the crypt. They told us it was originally built to hold Washington's body, BUT he died 25 years before the crypt was finished and they didn't want to dig him up and move him later, so now the crypt is empty and more of a museum than anything else.

 Here is Caleb with Robert E. Lee and his awesome tour headphones on

 Then they took us to the Old Supreme Court area of the Capitol. This is where our tour took a turn for the worse. There were about 50 in our group and at least 6 other groups of 50 surrounding us at all times. When you go down to the Old Supreme Court they show you the only remaining columns of the original Capitol in this tiny little atrium, and that's when it happened. This awful sound followed by everyone scattering away from the center of the room. A teenage boy was throwing up. Awesome. And right about the time our guide called for a biohazard unit, he threw up again. Gross. So these couple of pictures are all I could manage to get as I was holding my breath and as I quickly tried to get away from the kid...

 Then they took us to the rotunda. It was awesome!

 The is a sculpture of 3 women who played a large part in the suffrage movement. The giant white blob in the back was left for the face of the first woman president. I wanted to tell them to go ahead and start carving my face, but decided that might seem a little forward

 Then they took us to the Sculpture room.

 We weren't supposed to stop here, but I snapped a quick picture

Anddddd that's all for the Capitol. After that.... we went on to see the Library of Congress.

Little did we know that today was one of 2 days a year that they open up the grand reading room to the public. So, while we went on a public tour, we snuck off for a few minutes to take a peak before it closed.

And that's all for today! Needless to say we are pretty whipped after a weekend of furniture moving and tourism, but it was great! Now.. back to reality and school for another week! Hope everyone else had a great Presidents Day! If we're lucky we might even get 5 inches of snow tonight!!