Spies and American History

James Bond's car from Goldfinger
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Joe had a bad night of coughing and congestion last night and didn’t get much sleep. After a late wakeup, we headed directly for the pharmacy round the corner which was open today. After buying up big for Joe we head to the nearby Starbucks for breakfast. Here I chose a cold protein pack containing small wholemeal bagel, grapes, apple slices, cheese and peanut paste – a good all round breakfast. Joe was feeling the preverbal ratshit, so even the egg and ham sandwich had no flavour.

Julia Child's Kitchen
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We flagged a taxi and got dropped at the spy museum. A fellow the previous night said it would take about 90mins to wander through the displays. Not sure what planet he was on – but three hours later we emerged after reading and watching heaps of information on US spies in Russia and visa-versa, spy equipment, spy disguises, spy dead-drops, communication and bugging devices, electronic hacking  etc. Unfortunately taking photos was prohibited. In the middle of the exhibition there was an Aston Martin used in the James Bond GoldFinger movie, which had been automated to show the rear deflection shield, the back tyre spikes and the front machine guns in turn.

To Spy or not to Spy...

Fully automated robotic car from Dukka Rally
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The final part of the exhibition outlined the biggest threat to America at the moment and that is the threat of terrorism to the disruption to the power/energy grids and how this would lead to bedlam and anarchy across the nation.

After a meal in the spy cafe, we caught a taxi to the American History Museum. With two and a half hours till closing, we knew we would not get through too much of this place today. We wandered through the sections on the invention of batteries, the combustion and steam engine and electricity. We looked through the transportation section and then moved on to see Julia Child’s kitchen. Last section we had a chance to look into was the Science in American Life. This showed how inventions in each of the decades from the 1920’s to the 1980 impacted on American life. This included things like penicillin, PVC, Post-It Notes and Kevlar, just to name a few. We were shooed out of the museum at 5.30pm when it closed.

We decided on a night in so Joe could have an early night and dose himself up on drugs and try and get some much needed sleep. I managed to catch up on a number of days of blogging and we packed our bags in preparation for our departure from the US tomorrow night.