Montreal, Notre-Dame Basilica

This church is so beautiful that it's hard to not be camera happy. The amount of detail in every aspect is astounding. Not to mention, it a very colorful! They do guided tours inside in both English and French that run every twenty minutes. The tours don't start until 10 I believe but the church itself is already open much earlier. The church has a large main chamber as well as a smaller chapel in the back and also a smaller glass enclosed chapel that is not open to tourists.

Most of these pictures are by Ella who brought her awesome camera to our trip. There is so much to post and everything will be posted completely out of order of our trip but oh well.

National Portrait Gallery

I had been meaning to go to the National Portrait Gallery for a while now since it is one of the few Smithsonian museums I have yet to go. It is actually a really huge building that has three floors and a huge inner garden that is just gorgeous. It features a whole variety of American art as well as portrait art. Let me just tell you, this place is amazing. A lot of these photos will feature a good friend of mine as well.

I'm not gonna lie, this is my new favorite place in DC. It's cool. It's beautiful. It's free. It's open until 7 pm. It's near a metro stop unlike the Botanic Gardens. It's surrounded by food places because it's near the Verizon Center and Chinatown. I didn't allot enough time to explore the whole place so I will definitely be going back.

Newseum

I have never been in the Newseum before, mostly because I didn't want to pay to go in. My good friend, who was in yearbook in high school, had been there before for a field trip and she agreed to go with me. The newseum isn't cheap. Right now admission is $22.95 which you can use the ticket to get in any two consecutive days. The building is captivating basically being all glass with a display outside that gets changed every day with new front pages of well known newspapers.

Inside, the building is huge. It has six floors and a basement that has a cafeteria. My friend and I did the tour all wrong since you are supposed to take the express elevator to the top and make your way to the basement. Now we know. So I will order my pictures in that way so I don't look like an idiot.

The top floor has the front pages of newspapers as well as a balcony where you can get a good view of the city. You then progress to the Vietnam War Exhibit.

The fifth floor had a lot of relics of newspapers dating centuries before. I mean, the newseum has a lot of historical value with all these old documents. It then leads to a large room with a wide screen TV that shows the different news of that day. What dominated the news during my stay? The death of Nancy Reagan. It then leads to an exhibit on the Civil Rights movement then to the 9/11 memorial exhibit.

The other levels had multiple exhibits, most of them are presentations that you can listen to and learn information with touch screens and headphones. They also have a studio that is functional and a memorial to reporters lost while working. It also exhibits the five freedoms we are entitled to.

The basement had the Berlin wall exhibit that has a huge piece of the Berlin Wall. They also have an FBI exhibit that features items and information about recent cases that you most likely have heard of. I asked and apparently most of these things were donated to them by people involved in the case. I mean, this exhibit was packed of just things from the cases.

The Newseum is huge and if you actually make the effort to read and listen to every little show and presentation that they have, you could be there all day. No wonder you would need a two day pass because I think you need two days to absorb all the information. Anyway, the whole Newseum is kind of depressing as well since the most significant news are usually the most negative ones so exhibits are very emotional. If you can handle the sadness, I say go because this place is pretty amazing.