Spring Break DC- Ford’s Theater, Archives, Library of Congress, Post Office Museum

Thursday morning we were up early again to get to Ford's Theater for our 9:30 tour. 

We learned a lot about Lincoln and the day of his death at the museum before we entered the theater where he was shot.

This is the gun John Wilkes Booth used,

and that is the theatre box Lincoln was sitting in when Booth entered and fatally wounded Lincoln.

The booth is kept the same as it was on the day Lincoln was shot.

After the shot was fired and Booth escaped Lincoln was quickly taken to a home across the street where he was laid in this bed.  It was here that he died.

The gift shop had a stack of books about Lincoln built into a tower going up to the third floor - so many books have been written about him.

From there we hit The Archives, which I somehow have no pictures of... We had to stand in line for a long time, which was harder on our feet than walking, but we were eventually able to see the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

From there we walked to the Library of Congress where we had to wait in line, in spite having a ticket, but once inside we enjoyed the incredible building as well as the...

Gutenberg Bible...

and Jeffereson's library - he donated much of his personal library after the national library was destroyed by fire during the war of 1812.

We walked over the the Bureau of Printing and Engraving but sadly they were out of tickets for the day so the girls decided to make a quick stop at the Air and Space Museum. The highlights:

The Wright Brothers bicycle and glider

and Armstrong's spacesuit from his trip the moon.

Then we visited the Postal Museum - a first for all of us.  We decided it was an overlooked gem of the Smithsonian.  We almost had the place to ourselves and the girls spent over an hour just looking at the stamp display.

Emily surprised me by being a bit of an encyclopedia of valuable stamps, many of which were on display including the Penny Black and the inverted Curtiss Jenny.

After the stamps the girls thought they'd seen it all, when they discovered we'd only seen about half of the museum.  With only 30 minutes left before they closed the girls enjoyed the mail vehicles exhibit as well exhibits about how mail has changed over the years.

With over 20,000 steps to our name our feet were tired but nothing like the exhaustion from the day before.  We took our last Metro ride back to the hotel where we grabbed our car and headed to our new hotel by the airport so we would be ready for our 6:00am flight home the next day.  Or so we thought...