Me, Agent 005

In order for a reprieve from depressing thoughts, we decided to venture to the International Spy Museum, although it was a rather depressing day already as it was our last day in Washington DC. It was pretty cold and windy outside again, so Mum used her supreme navigating skills and guided us off the subway, not at our usual stop, but at one closest to the museum. Dad was rather impressed, as he himself did not in fact have any recollection of the proximity of the subway stop to the museum. Well as it turns out, this particular museum is not one of the many free things one can find in Washington DC. 'Twas quite expensive as it so happens. After spending $90, we placed our things in the cloakroom and proceeded to enter the world of espionage. The first chamber was where we all chose our secret identities. I ended up as 13-year-old Jane Meyer from Sweetwater, Tennessee on a vacation trip to Dublin, Ireland where my secret mission was to acquire a certain piece of information and send it back in to HQ under the pretext of learning as the student I allegedly was. Next was the

orientation room where a video was played about the life of a spy and the importance of secrecy. Don’t trust anyone, and all that. Then we moved on to training, where you could work on the art of surveillance by learning about bugs, hidden cameras, blending in and hacking to name a few. You could also practice your stealth skills by crawling through a fake overhead air duct like you see in the movies. It was a little awkward since I had kept one of my bags and it kept falling off my shoulder while I was crawling but what can you do. After that there were exhibits about the history of the delicate art of spying, dating back to Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. Even Elizabeth I had her own network of spies. They were the ones who filtered out the information about the assassination plot masterminded by Mary Queen of Scots and decoded the coded messages, sending Mary to the executioners block.

The on we went to the age of the revolutionary war, with George Washington’s spies and then the Civil War, where the Union soldiers used blimps, which were apparently a thing in the 1860’s which I hadn’t realized, to scout the enemy lines from above. Then the two World Wars, where they used carrier pigeons to send messages and had a spy miscommunication in WWII which lead the States to not realize Japan was planning an attack and thus resulted in Pearl Harbour. There was also an entire exhibit dedicated to the breaking of Enigma, which made me happy because of the Imitation Game, and they had a real Enigma machine on display. After I had finished the WWII section, Mum came to find me so we could all go for lunch. The Spy Museum didn’t have a cafeteria so we ended up having to cross the street to one of the Smithsonian Art Museums. This tuned out to be a great idea since the cafeteria was awesome. They had put a roof overtop of a courtyard in between four buildings, added water and plant features and placed tables all over. It was super warm and it smelled good and I plan to model my future library after it. We lazed around and ate for about an hour before heading back to the Spy Museum to finish up our walkthrough. The last section was

temporary and was all about the various Bond villains and their real life parallels. I found it funny because a lot of the stuff Bond used was before it’s time and the CIA and the MI6 actually took ideas for gear and technology and such from the Bond movies. That was a fun area to walk around because they had a lot of the props used in the movies, including Jaws’ metal teeth and a lot of different suits. I was pretty far ahead of the other three so I browsed around the gift shop while I waited for them. They had some cool stuff in there but I don’t think they should be selling standard hand-cuff keys. Might lead to some problems, ya know, just maybe. It was getting pretty late by the time the other three finished up so as soon as Isaac bought a souvenir, because he just had to, we walked over to the Archives to check it out. They have one of the four original Magna Cartas as well as the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, all of which were on Isaac’s and my scavenger hunts. We didn’t stay long, just long enough to check out all of the main attractions. Honestly, even though the Magna Carta is approximately 500 years older than the Declaration of Independence, they look about the same in terms of state of disrepair. I’m pretty sure the Magna Carta is easier to read actually. After we walked trough the two main galleries, we crossed the street to the subway on our last grand exit of Washington DC. Peace out m8s.

#camping #washingtondc #maryland