Sunday's Washington DC higllights

On Sunday morning, we headed off by bus to the Holocaust Museum, stopping off en route at the Jefferson Memorial, commemorating the author of the Declaration of Independence. The Holocaust Museum chronicles the Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany and the occupied territories from Hitler's rise to power in 1933 to the end of WW2 in 1945. Exhibits included a railway car used to transport Polish Jews to Treblinka concentration camp and mounds of shoes from executed Jews. We then returned to the Mall area to visit the Air and Space Museum. First stop was the original Wright brothers plane from 1903, the first aircraft ever to make a piloted flight. Also from the early flying days, the classic Spirit of St Louis, the first plane to be flown solo across the Atlantic in 1927 by Charles Lindbergh, was suspended from the museum ceiling. Five years later, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly non-stop across the Atlantic, who then landed beside Derry city. Moving onto spacecraft, the Apollo exhibition showcased the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spaceflight programmes which resulted in the first landing on the moon by Apollo 11 in 1969. Other impressive exhibits showed how the International Space Station was created and 30 years history of the Space Shuttle. After a quick stop at the White House (designed by Irish man James Hoban) the Greenhills crew hopped on a bus to Georgetown for an Italian meal at Buca di Beppo.

Plane flown by Amelia Earhart

Plane flown by Wright Brothers

Waiting for President Obama!

The White House