After a hearty breakfast, we stowed our cases in the left luggage room and headed out to the American Archives. Walking down Pennsylvania Avenue we paused for another look at the White House. This time stopping to see both the front and back sides. If you thought that the security was tight on the front side, you wanted to see the rear of the White House. The roadway had massive security restrictions, nobody was allowed on any part of the road except a very narrow “designated crossing” area. Five or six policemen were stationed along the roadway watching all the tourists and passing residents carefully and intently.

We walked in the hot sun to the American Archive looking for any possible shade as we went. Upon arrival we were searched and scanned / screened by quite a tight security section. Massive signs were everywhere reminding you that photography was totally forbidden anywhere. We first saw a copy of Magna Carta and then headed upstairs to see the Declaration of Independence. We weren’t ready for the length of the queue, which was like a theme park ride queue snaking this way and that. We queued for 10 minutes but then left the line as time was moving on and we only had a couple of hours before we needed to be at the station. Once again we noted that the area that displayed the declaration was totally different to the set used in National Treasure. We left and walked to the Natural History Museum.

Inside the Natural History museum we were a little taken aback to find that large portions of it were under redevelopment. Therefore various different halls were totally shut. Once again it became clear that Night of the museum 2 had built a set, which was their interpretation / version of the museum and was quite different in places. Again like the Air and SPace museum, the differences were noticeable but quite subtle.
Staying as long as possible to look around the museum we then headed back up to Pennsylvania Avenue and towards our hotel pausing only to pop into Subway and pick up some lunch. Knowing the number of McDonalds restaurants in New York, I was keen for the boys not to eat too many McDonalds in Washington.

We arrived back at the hotel and took a taxi to Union Station. The traffic near to the station was immense and so we bailed out and walked down the road and into the station, rather than being dropped off right outside the door. We didn’t have long to wait for the train which was a relief. The queue line snaked around and I commented to Liz that due to there being no rope marking out the queue line when the doors to the boarding area / platform opened all the people at the very back would simply surge towards the doors rather than respect the line. This is exactly what happened, so we abandoned the queue and headed for the doors, knowing that we had 4 cases to stow and needed to find an area with enough space.

The train was really great, the seats were wide and they had tray backs, like aircraft seats. Unlike an aircraft they had plenty of leg room even for tall people like me!! Our journey lasted just over three hours and took us passed or through many places such as Philadelphia, Baltimore and Delaware.

We arrived in New York Penn Station and took a tube (Metro) to Queensboro Plaza. Our Hotel is situated just a few minutes walk from the station.
Once we checked in we dumped our bags in our room and headed out for a pizza. On the way down to the pizza place Matty and Luke spotted a BMW i3 parked up by the gas station (I’m getting into the local lingo – lol). The pizza was real tasty and quite huge. The diameter of the “pie” (as they call it) was considerable.