Smithsonians: Air and Space Museum and Holocaust Memorial

Over the break our little family took the metro into DC two separate times to go see two of the many Smithsonians. On our first excursion we headed to the National Air and Space Museum. This place was huge! We were there for at least 3 hours and I still feel like we hardly saw anything. We looked and walked through several exhibits highlighting the planets, stars, universe, landing on the moon, first flight (wright brothers), fighter planes, rockets, modern airliners and probably a few more that I can't remember. I loved reading about all the different scientists and their contributions to the progression of space and flight. So amazing. I'm still baffled at how far we have come in just the last 100 years. Hooray for science!
The following week, we rode into DC with our friends, the Kartchners, and decided to see the Holocaust Memorial Museum. I knew it was going to be depressing, but I wasn't prepared for all the details. The museum was set up in such a way that you had to walk through the entire thing. It's like IKEA. You can't get out unless you know the secret passageways. Anyway, the museum was very dark and slightly cramped. I think they did that on purpose to give a darker more depressing ambiance. I was most interested in the floor dedicated to the concentration camps and what they did there. We saw uniforms for both prisoners and nazis and piles of shoes, hair brushes, umbrellas, and other miscellaneous items that people brought with them to the camps. They had a video of some of the medical experiments they conducted on the prisoners. After three slides I couldn't watch anymore. We read many stories of families being separated and most of them dying. We also read many stories of people risking their lives to rescue tens to thousands of Jews.

By the end of the museum I felt numb. I couldn't cry because what I had seen and read seemed unbelievable.