Day Two in D.C.

On Tuesday, we took it easy, focusing on three places. In the morning, we left our hotel and walked to the Rosslyn Metro stop. We had to change trains in D.C. to make our way to the National Building Museum, which was originally built as the Veterans' Pension Office after the Civil War.

An amazing space, it has been and continues to be used for Inaugural Balls and other major events.

In addition to the main space shown here, it houses interesting exhibits: my favorite was one on the planning and building of D.C. itself.

We saw a couple of photo exhibits of buildings that were fascinating, too.

From there, we hopped back on the Metro and went to lunch at a place called Proof across the street from the National Portrait Gallery, which we planned to see the next day.

In the early afternoon, we to the subway down to Pennsylvania Avenue to see the relatively new Newseum--a journalism museum. I'd recommend it if you go. The pictures here are of a news helicopter and a guard tower from the Berlin wall.

Finally, we got in line and stood for about an hour to get into the National Archives to see the original Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, plus a number of other documents. They keep it dark to slow the deterioration of the documents and, of course, flash photos are not allowed.

And Lori found a John Adams doll in the gift shop, which she'll show you if you ask.

We found a spot for happy hour on Indiana Street, and had some wings and snack wraps with our drinks.

Our feet were pretty tired at that point, so we called it a day and headed back to Arlington.