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In the Company of Grandchildren
A Vacation Adventure in the U.S. Capital
By Carol Greenberg
The hands-on history room allows children to touch objects from four centuries of American history, send a message in Morse code, operate a cotton gin or try on a hoop skirt. The Information Age exhibit has more than 40 hands-on computers and interactive stations. We then headed back to the hotel for a swim, complimentary drinks in the atrium dining room and dinner.
The next day we planned to visit the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the National Museum of Natural History, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial.
I had my plan. I had my maps. I felt like a general in charge of a small army as I escorted my band of soldiers to the overwhelming complimentary buffet breakfast dining room. As I watched them eat, I thought they would never want lunch. Wrong! The peanut butter sandwiches were great, followed by drinks, ice cream and chips.
The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum is for kids of any age. You can take a walk through a DC-7 cockpit, touch a 4-billion-year-old moon rock or see the Spirit of St. Louis – the plane in which Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic. Kids can also try operating a computer on a Martian landscape and sample the freeze-dried ice cream that the astronauts eat in space.
As if the exhibit of dinosaurs, fossils and minerals were not enough, the National Museum of Natural History had a special exhibit of spiders. We watched tarantulas devour a live meal. The museum's discovery room was filled with boxes holding mathematical wooden puzzles for kids to solve by themselves and chemists doing experiments. It held everyone's attention for more than an hour.
