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December 19, 2004
DC 1st day
We left our hotel around 11 am, it was very hard to wake Didi up around 9 am this morning, and he was complaining that it was only 6 am in SF. Oh goosh, apparently he was still in SF time zone.
Luckily our hotel located pretty close, around 10 blocks, to ‘The Mall’ (all the historic places & museums). So we just walked there and our 1st stop was the Nat’l Gallery of Art (East Building), we were shocked that it was no admission to all the museums, wow!! We were here around 2 hours, and then we walked around 8 blocks (big blocks) to Capitol Hill, then continued climbing up another 4 blocks to Supreme Court. From there we walked down and stopped by again at the Nat’l Gallery of Art – the West Building. This West Building is actually have all the famous painters such as Monet, Manet, Seurat, Picasso, Gaugin, Renoir, Matisse….you name it…we were just so amazed with the collections, and again it is free!! I guess this is where all the tax money go.
After that we went to the Smithsonian Institution – Nat’l Museum of Natural History, woow this museum is unbelievable. Didi was so happy and excited, just like kid goes to candy store. OoOOh NOOO, my husband is a geek. He was so excited checked every single thing, especially when could see the dinosaurs’ or other animals’ bones from millions years ago. And in the gem section, there was this HOPE Diamond, which is the biggest and flawless blue diamond in the world.45.52 carat. That was really WOW!!
This Gem section was amazing, you could see all diamonds, rubies, topazes, and sapphires either the most, the biggest or the best quality. Well, it’s a lot of super wealthy people out there.
We didn’t realize it was 5 o’clock, and when we were about to step out from the museum it was actually snowing. This made our trip back to the hotel even harder, we were exhausted, starving and cold. Then we decided to have dinner @ Zaytinya – Greek Rest. We know this from Hotel Monaco front desk, who is Indonesian too.
We finished dinner around 7 o’clock and went straight back to the hotel.
We had a very long day today, we started at 11 am and got back around 7.30, and we didn’t take cab or bus, just walked walked walked and walked. But don’t get me wrong we had a great fun!! Can’t wait for another long day tomorrow.
Posted by hamdani family at December 19, 2004 06:02 PM