DC family vacation 2012 - Day 3

On the third morning of our family vacation, Shannon, BJ, Mom, Dad, and I all drove out to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space center in Chantilly, VA to see huge airplanes, jets, and shuttles. It was my Dad’s birthday today and he really wanted to see the Udvar-Hazy Center and all of the amazing flight vehicles there. We left DC around 9 am and it only took about 40 minutes to get there (the museum is right next to Dulles Airport). We had a quick breakfast while waiting for the museum to open.

We first visited the observation tower (before a lot of people arrived) from which we saw lots of planes landing in Dulles. The tower was really fun (it was a mock-up air traffic control tower and we could hear the real communications between controllers and pilots at Dulles!).

We wandered the museum all morning. Some of my highlights were seeing the SR-71 Blackbird and the Enterprise shuttle (which is being replaced today by Discovery). There was a lot to see and do at the Udvar-Hazy Center and it is a really well put-together museum with tons of historically important artifacts. I highly recommend a visit!

We drove back to our apartment, met up with Carlos, and walked to Union Station for some lunch at Potbelly (we really like that place!). After re-energizing, we went next-door to visit the Postal Museum for a little while (I especially like the postal dog Owney).

Next, we took the metro to Chinatown to visit the American Art Museum for a bit. While there, we visited the Art of Video Games exhibit (which I of course like very much, even though I can never play Super Mario Bros. because the line is too long!).

By this time, we were ready to head to Foggy Bottom for our dinner reservation at Founding Farmers. This was the first time that I had visited this restaurant, but I will definitely be coming back. It was a great choice for my Dad’s birthday dinner and we all enjoyed our meals very much (I tried fried green tomatoes for the first time and had a great grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup). We were all stuffed after our delicious dinner and waddled back to the metro to return to Union Station. Carlos, Shannon, BJ, and I dropped Mom and Dad off at their hotel and we wandered back home (I played some Zelda for Shannon before we all went to bed). What a great day!