DC Day 8 - The Road Home

For our last day, we decided to pick out a few final places to visit. We started at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, a somber, crowded experience set up as "areas" chronologically arranged. In a fashion slightly similar to the International Spy Museum, you pick up a passport of a real life person who lived through the Holocaust. You're supposed to read each page as you enter each area. We were most impressed by the two level room of portraits from a single studio in Poland, I think. It's a room you go through twice, once on a walk way, and once below. There are probably hundreds of photos there, mostly of people from a single town who died in the Holocaust. They were arranged such that they stuck out from the wall on a separate railing, adding to the effect.

Right next the museum, we went to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, whose URL is http://www.moneyfactory.gov, oddly enough. This is where roughly half of all paper money is printed (the other half is done at the Texas office). The workers there have a good sense of humor. One of them held up a sign that said "Tour guide has free samples." Another sign said something like "How do you think I feel, I just printed my lifetime salary in a few minutes." It was a short, but fun tour. They were more strict about cameras here than anyplace I'd been. Signs everywhere saying no pictures or video and if you are caught, they will take your camera and not return it.

After lunch, we headed to another Smithsonian Museum, the Museum of African Art. This turned out to be one of our favorites. They museum is quiet, well spaced and all the glass protecting the artifacts and art pieces is entirely clean. I don't think too many kids come here. There were a few modern pieces, which were quite amazing. A man built of about 5000 match sticks, with a light behind him casting an eerie shadow on the wall, standing over a grave with a cross labeled "Congo 1875".

Close by, we stopped at the Freer Gallery of Art, which was also quiet, and very well layed out. Here we focused on the pieces from the Indian sub-continent, the Islamic pieces, and to a lesser degree, those from East Asia. From there, we picked up our luggage back at the hotel and headed to the airport for our 25th and 26th flight together.