SPY MUSEUM

Last day of the trip and we spent the day finishing up in DC.

First thing in the morning we headed out to the International Spy Museum. Grandpa made a reservation at a parking garage so we could get decent parking and as we were walking from the garage along the sidewalk to the museum GG caught her foot on a sandbag that was holding down a barricade and she took a very bad fall, hitting her back and kidney area on a metal pole.  This knocked the wind out of her and she had to lay on the sidewalk for several minutes with passersby stopping to help, call an ambulance, police, etc.  She finally convinced everybody that she was ok to proceed, but boy! does her back and waist hurt.  Tomorrow we will check out her bruises.

Getting to the Spy Museum early on Monday morning was a good strategy.  There was no line to get in.  First we got  into the elevator and listened to the spy instructions.  Then, when we got out of the elevator we had to choose a spy identity and memorize it--our spy name, birthplace, occupation, country of residence,  purpose of visit, duration of trip.  Then we entered the realm of spies.

  There were several rooms, each about a different spy technique--how to blend into a crowd and not be noticed, how to do a dead drop, a brush pass, how to open a lock.  There was also an area about famous spies and another about the history of spying, which goes all the way back to biblical times, and probably earlier than that.  We crawled through the air ducts to get from one room to another and we could look down through the slats to see what GG and Grandpa were doing.

We all had a great time at the spy museum and wished that we had saved some of our spending money to buy some of the tricky gadgets at the spy museum store.

Next we got our car out of the garage and drove over to the Holocaust Museum.  We ate our lunch in the park and then walked across the street and into the museum.