Spokane- D.C.-Munich
Day one: Spokane-D.C.
Day two: D.C.
Day three: D.C.- Munich by plane
So far on our adventures Pat and I have traveled from Spokane to Munich, Germany’s. The first day in Denver we spent most of the day on standby waiting to get on a flight. We eventually got added to a flight and we even got to sit together! It was close though. That day, every single flight we tried to get on had a lot of people show up last minute. We’d count how many open seats were still left and think that we were going to get on then a family of four would show up three minutes before the gate agent closed the doors and we’d be bumped to the next flight. We almost decided to go on different flights and meet in D.C. but Pat got on super last minute.
We finally got to D.C. and decided to spend the night in the airport because our flight to Munich wasn’t until 5:30 P.M. the next day. Since we had such a long layover we planned to take the metro from Dulles to the National Mall to spend the day. We got a bagel and coffee then went to see the city. I loved walking around D.C. with Pat and showing him the Capitol Building, the Washington Monument and we found the White House together (which I somehow misssed on my last trip). I was surprised by how many Secret Service members were outside by the gates. It makes sense but I had never seen that (or don’t remember it) and it was kind of weird walking by. We wondered out loud how many security cameras we were on, then wondered how many Secret Service agents knew we were wondering. Pat took a nap and I did some yoga in the garden behind the American History Museum. I got a ton of mosquito bites and Pat didn’t get any, the lucky bastard. All of this was before 10 A.M.
At 10 A.M. all of the Smithsonian museums open and we went to the Natural History Museusm and saw the Hall of Human Origins, the Hall of Mammals, and Life in One Cubic Foot. We also saw part of the United States Holcaust Memorial Museum but we didn’t know we needed tickets to see the permanent exhibit. Parts of the year tickets can be purchased the day of, but we were there right as the Summer season was starting and it was really busy. The other areas were still incredibly interesting. There was an exhibit called Americans and the Holocaust, that discusses how much the US knew about the atrocities taking place and when. There was one interactive area where, if you clicked on the US map it would pull up different newspaper clippings from that state from the time. We found a couple editions of our local paper The Spokesman Review. There was also an exhibit drawing some comparisons with the Syrian Refugee Crisis and what took place during the Holocaust.
After that we went back to Dulles to get on our plane to Munich. Eight hours later we landed in Germany.