off the beaten path in DC

Friday of Spring Break, the morning after circus, we talked about what to do over breakfast. We decided after some relaxing time at home, we'd head into DC to see some museums.  My friend Dan does freelance work for the Smithsonian and helped put together an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art all about the history of video games.  The exhibit is called "The Art of Video Games" and runs through September 2012.   I highly recommend it for all ages for anyone interested in the the progression of video games through time, and how much of a role they've played in our culture.

The museum contains some incredible pieces including the presidential portraits, and over 7,000 artists are represented in their awesome collection.  We didn't get to see it all, hard to entertain a 5 1/2 year old for long in there.  But the video game exhibit is another story...its a completely interactive multimedia experience and they were mesmerized.  We knew we also wanted to visit another museum after lunch so we took in a bit of the presidential portraits and then moved along to the video game exhibit so we could spend some time looking at old Mario Bros., Pacman and Atari game systems.

Remember these?  Space Invaders!  They have every video gaming system ever made on display there. Remember Commodore 64? Sega?  Ha!

Next, it was time for lunch.  As much I wanted to eat Mongolian BBQ in Chinatown...

...We played it more safe for our picky eaters and headed to one of the best pizza spots in DC (which happens to be next to Chinatown).  Matchbox.  Mmmmm.

With bellies full of pizza, we then headed to the Mall to see if we could luck out and get front row parking for the Museum of Natural History.  Ummmmmm, nope.  There must have been a BAZILLION  people with the same idea, and on a beautiful spring break day, of course the main museum strip in DC was going to be packed.  So we headed towards Union Station to visit a lesser known, off the beaten path museum, the Postal Museum.  Still part of the Smithsonian, its a small gem of a museum, extremely kid-friendly and less visited.  It turned out to be a huge hit!   We got great parking, they happened to have a very interesting exhibit about the Titanic and Hindenburg disasters (there thru Jan 2014), and our boys had a great time learning about the history of mail.  Its way more interesting than it sounds!