DC: Museum of the Bible

Museum of the Bible Day.  The day we all laughed the hardest.  Delia had a love/hate relationship with this museum.  We got tickets for it knowing nothing about it, except that it came recommended.  As we speculated about what kind of "Bible experiences" we were in for (Photo Op in Bathsheba's Bath Tub?!), we couldn't help but giggle.  It had its cheesy parts for sure, but also some rich learning opportunities.

The kids grew quite city savvy on this trip.  They both want to spend some time living in a big city!  Ella might even be interested in DC colleges now!  It was fun to watch them figure out the Metro and revel the lovely ease of it saving you a walk for a mere $2. 

The Bible Museum is 6 floors of study on the Bible.  The top 2 floors are Israel Artifacts and History of the Bible.  

Delia looking angelic in front of the Holy Land images projected on the walls inside the elevators!

The artifacts were cool.  I felt the Bible coming to life in interesting new ways as we saw some of the items we've always read about-- an actual stone from the temple, real Baal and Asherah idols, some of the things pictured above.  

The History of the Bible floor was pretty interesting too.  Here, thousands of years were covered, telling us how the translation of the Bible we have today came to be.  There were several rooms, hours of reading, hundreds of different Bibles, and multiple movies to watch.  Delia did NOT love this part.  As we moved from one room to the next, we died as her face absolutely fell and she exclaimed in horror, "IT'S SO BIG!"  What I learned from this section is just how valuable the Bible, a book I have many copies of and totally take for granted, is.  Some were martyred to translate it.  Others went through painstaking processes to copy and print it.  Throughout time, God has revealed consistently with human-found evidence that His word is trustworthy and true.  (Above, Ella and Dave examine a facsimile of the Dead Sea Scrolls.)

Seeing how many languages the Bible has been translated into was eye-opening too.  But, there are still so many languages yet to go!  And some languages are done, but the museum can't make that info public because it's illegal to have a Bible in those places.

The next floor was all about an amazing Bible sensory experience that Delia will tell you was one of her favorite parts of the whole trip!  Here we were immersed in Bible stories.  With unlimited resources, the Bible Museum succeeded in doing what we attempt to do each summer at VBS-- make the Bible stories come to life by dropping you into a part of them.  There were lights and sounds and fog and rooms created to feel like Noah's ark, or Abraham's starry sky, or the 10 plagues, or the Red Sea, or the Ark of Covenant, or the crossing the Jordan River.  (I wasn't supposed to take pictures, so I can't show you any of it, except the one above that I took on sly.)

After our trip through the Old Testament we switched to the New Testament and met some of the people closest to Jesus and then walked through Nazareth.  This was cool, but rock-climber Ella was offended that all the great rock walls and trees and had signs saying "NO CLIMBING".  So tempting!  We started a funny hunt for all the non-Bible things hiding in Nazareth-- like outlets and thermostats.  Maybe because we had spent 2 brain-busting hours reading 100 different translations of the Bible, this was SO funny to us! ;)

A silly children's center on the second floor had us playing arcade-style, Bible-themed games.  Like, catapult the ball at Goliath's forehead.

And another floor explored the Bible's influence on culture.  Everything from its use in the documents that are foundational to our nation to music lyrics and movies.  Above is Elvis' Bible (took that pic for you, Mom!).  Below are some of the Bible verses you'll find on anything from fast food wrappers to professional athletes' shoes.

A few last shots and words.  Above, Ella with her favorite Bible verse.  Below, Delia pointing out the nickname all her friends call her on the wall of Bible names.  We'd give the Museum of the Bible mixed reviews.  Parts of it were amazingly cool.  Parts of it were painfully boring.  Much of it was not original artifacts, but facsimiles and not everything was impressive.  Dave said, "I have a book in my office that shows me this same picture!"  Or, "This Bible on display is one I have on a shelf at home."  But, it did get us to think about and appreciate the Bible in some new ways, it inspired me as a teacher, and it gave us an opportunity to bond as a family as we learned and laughed together.  Also, the Mediterranean food in the Manna Cafe was some of the best food we ate!

DC: Arlington

The part of the week that Dave was most looking forward to was a trip to Arlington National Cemetery.  Here we splurged and saved ourselves more walking in the heat and took the tram tour.  This was wonderful!  It drove us around the entire cemetery in a breezy, open-air tram, with narration of some of the stories of those buried here.  The tram let us out at important places, like the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  On this day, there were actually 10 real funerals going on, so the tram did not make stops at a few places like the Iwo Jima (Marine Corps) Memorial.  

    

This day also had the best clouds. :)

We had all the feelings on this trip!  At a hallowed place, like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where the ceremony is so precise and revered, you can't help but feel all the pride and patriotism, all the gratitude for those who made the ultimate sacrifice and for their families who live in the heart wrenching unknown.  

The Amphitheatre.

A view of the whole city from Robert E. Lee's house on the hill.

This day ended with a dinner we were pretty excited for!  After hearing rave reviews, I made us a reservation for Sfoglina-- a pasta place with a famous chef.  We had the 3 pasta family sampler with a side of Nonna Palmina’s Meatballs and we devoured it!  For all the foodies out there, this is Fettuccine Alfredo from Rome, Gnocchi with shiitake mushrooms, porcini crema and grana Padano from Le Marche, and Mafalde Telefono with smoked mozzarella, tomato, and basil from the Amalfi Coast (the most delicious thing I ate all week!). I haven't spent much time talking about our food, but we ate well!  We tried to find unique DC places, causal or fancy.  Some nights it was ramen and Brussel sprouts tempura, or a cheese-stuffed mushroom burger for beef-averse Ella and a birthday cake milkshake for sugar-lover Delia from Shake Shack (the East Coast's In & Out) and some nights it was pasta we had to google the pronunciation for! :) Ella is an adventurous eater and said great food was one of her best surprises on this trip.

DC: The White House

The night we booked our DC trip, I sent an email to our Congressman to start the process for tickets to places like the White House and the Capitol.  It always kind of felt like a long shot that we'd get to go, so we managed our expectations and said we'd be fine if for some reason it didn't work out.  We're SO glad it did because this White House tour was way cooler than we anticipated!  We saw legit, recognizable stuff and the propaganda for our current administration was limited to none. ;)

White House Tour day started with a stop at DC's famous Astro Doughnuts, where the crème brulee doughnut was delectable.  Check out the s'more one with a whole roasted marshmallow on it!

After passing FOUR separate levels of security, including one with dogs, one with an x-ray machine, and two with Secret Service guys running our social security numbers, we were allowed in!  The tour was self-guided, which was perfect.  We could go nice and slow.  We were the last group in our time slot, so it felt like we were the only ones there.  The first thing we saw was the garden and the famous Truman balcony.

This windowed hallway was adorned with picture collages of  presidents living their everyday lives in White House.  We all loved this one dedicated to Pets of the White House.

We peeked in the Library, the Vermeil Room, the China Room, the Green, Blue and Red Rooms and the State Dining Room.  Our favorite was the East Room, which housed this famous picture of Washington that Dolly Madison famously snatched from the Old White House as it burned down.  We recognized this room as the backdrop for lots of famous stuff-- like where the Hamilton cast sang "One Last Time" to President Obama.

It struck us how ornate and opulent everything in the White House was!  There were no ordinary end tables, for example, every one had legs carved out of gold eagles.  No regular lamps, just showy chandeliers.  Every piece of art on the walls was old and famous and meant something.  We left the White House and walked back to our hotel through McPherson Park-- a homeless camp.  In a matter of minutes we literally walked from the heights of grandiosity to a community of people living in tents.  Another one of those strange contradictions in this city.

Leaving the White House, a nice couple in front of us offered to take our family's picture.  This happened a lot of this trip!  We have some great pics of the 4 of us and we didn't ask for a single one!  Of course we returned the favor often.  In all my White House pictures, I'm noticing the Secret Service guys in the background intentionally covering their faces.  Interesting!

One last look from Lafayette Park.  Because it was a surprise how neat this tour actually was, we all ranked the White House as one of our DC Faves!  I feel like "I've been inside the White House" will play well for all future get-to-know-you games, like Two Truths and a Lie! :)

DC: Holocaust Museum

Ella's History teacher told her the Holocaust Museum would be her favorite.  While, after 3 trips through this museum now, I can't ever say I "enjoy" it or it's "my favorite", I can always appreciate it.  To be confronted with some of humanity's darkest moments and most evil choices and to then see the light and redemption at the end of it is important.   One different thing about this trip through the Holocaust Museum was how much more historical fiction I've read since I was last here in 2003!  Thanks to my book club and our love for WWII stories, at least a dozen times, I found information in the museum that I could say, "I read a book about this!"

Your journey through the floors of the Holocaust Museum starts with a card telling the story of a real person who endured the Holocaust.  As you go through the floors and divisions in history, you turn pages to continue their story.  Three of our people were Polish, one Austrian.  Three of our people went to concentration camps.  Three of our people survived, one died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz.

  

The first floor tells of the Nazi Assault through propaganda and the steps taken to strip the Jews of their businesses and livelihoods and rights.  Here we learned about events like The Night of Broken Glass, where Jewish temples were desecrated, their Torah scrolls ripped and destroyed.  Dave tried to see if he could read any of the Hebrew.  He could. :)

  

The second floor tells of the horrific and drastic Final Solution of the Nazis to completely eliminate the Jews through mass murder in concentration camps.  The train car and the shoe room are always hard to walk through.

This museum was a tough one for Delia.  She did not know about a lot of this.  She had no idea what a gas chamber was.  She stayed close to Dave, letting him gently narrate the horrors we were learning about.  Ella has studied this in more advanced History classes.  She was hungry to read it all.  I hate the subject matter, but I do love watching her learn.

There is nothing pleasant about this journey through the Holocaust.  The last floor is about liberation and acknowledgment of all those who helped and worked to bring justice.  A bright spot in this dark outing was seeing the several panels of (familiar) Dutch names-- people who risked their lives and safety to help and protect Jews after the Germans invaded the Netherlands.

"Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them." Deut. 4:9

This afternoon at the Holocaust Museum was, appropriately, dark and gloomy.  Thunderstorms raged outside.  Needing a breath/break, or just admiring the rain we get to see so seldom, we had to stop and watch the drops streaming down the glass ceiling.  

DC: National Zoo

Dave and I totaled it up.  Between the two of us, we've been to Washington DC 8 times!  Our goal on this trip was to introduce our kids to the classics, while still finding some new things we'd never seen.  The National Zoo checked that box!  The coolest thing about the National Zoo is that it's the only place left in our country to see pandas!  This zoo houses a 3 panda family and we sure enjoyed them!

Another favorite was this interactive, educational bird show!  Ella loves birds, so she especially enjoyed getting up close to her feathered friends.

(The red panda sign says, "The weather is too hot for me, so I'm hanging out in the a/c." and we felt that so hard.)

This was a great zoo, beautifully landscaped and having a nice variety of animals, from big ones like elephants and tigers...

To more obscure, like monkeys with mustaches!

We had a great couple of hours here, taking a break from the reading and learning and enjoying some beautiful creation!