Hitting up the museums

Mass workout in the National Mall

One nice thing about DC is that all the public museums are free. In the short time that I've been here, I've tried to visit as many museums as possible -- checks off my tourist bucket/to-do list. In addition to hanging with Ethan Underhill (which was awesome-blossom) this weekend, I visited the Air and Space Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the Holocaust Museum. Generally the exhibits were great, albeit slightly childish. Being that it's summer in DC, attendance to any of the museums is actually quite annoying. It can be difficult to appreciate the magnificence or profundity of an exhibit when surrounded by throngs of crowds: hot, sweaty, body odor, stupid commentary and loud Chinese filling the atrium, shoving, pushing, and the list goes on. For this reason, I entered and quickly strolled through the Air and Space and the Natural History Museum. In contrast, the Holocaust Museum was far more civil. Surprisingly -- and I found this encouraging -- the museum was packed. But the exhibits are only open to "x" numbers of people at a time, giving one time to appreciate the exhibits in a more personal, less tourist intrusive manner. The museum was very moving and depressing, but having actually been to Auschwitz, it didn't nor could it compare.