Washington [Day 2]

We return where we left off at the National Museum of Natural History to see a humongous skeleton of a sea turtle. Note that younger sister is particularly excited to see this, and can't wait to get to Boston to see a real live giant sea turtle at the New England Aquarium.

Slices of space rocks! Which are, for the most part not made out of rock, but metal. It's interesting to see the different patterns on these.

More rocks! But why do these glow in the dark? Certain minerals fluoresce under ultraviolet (UV) light. If the Wikipedia article is all Greek to you, leave me a note in the comments and I'll explain it in English :)

 This is the last rock, I promise. It's bits of mineral... Contained within a different mineral. It takes some very interesting conditions for rocks like these to form, but the end result looks pretty freaking awesome.

SHARK ATTACK!!! You can see here - sharks have several rows of teeth. So if one breaks or falls off for whatever reason, another can easily take its place.

And who can visit Washington, DC without visiting the White House? Not me, that's who!

Washington [Day 1]

Arrival at the lovely Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC. And look, they even left us milk and cookies for our arrival!

We used the Metro (subway) to get around Washington. Much easier than trying to drive around downtown in an unfamiliar city! Also, note: the stations smell distinctly of burnt rubber :p

The Washington Monument.Unfortunately, we didn't climb to the top, as we were a little more excited about seeing the museums.

The first airplane (!!!), built by the Wright brothers at the National Air and Space Museum. AWESOME.

My sister, the pilot. Also one of the dorkiest people I know.

The First Ladies Pool at the Botanic Gardens. I also took five billion several pictures of flowers while I was there, but I won't bore you. I'll paste the album link so you can peruse the prettyness if you so wish :)

A quick peek at the U.S. Capitol Building.

One ice cream bar later, at the National Museum of Natural History - look, it's two Doryfish (known as the regal tang or blue surgeonfish)! Also...

A Nemofish! Also known as a clownfish :)

To top off the day, we visited the famous Hope Diamond, in its temporary "Embracing Hope" setting.

Here's the album link, for anyone who wants to see more pictures :)