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LOT - Polish Airlines Flights from Amsterdam, Netherlands (AMS) to Washington (IAD)
As part of booking roundtrip flights which depart from US airports,
Orbitz is pleased to offer airline tickets on LOT - Polish Airlines, which operates a daily non-stop flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands (AMS) to Washington (IAD) regularly scheduled to depart at 12:20pm and arrive at 2:53pm. Usually a Boeing 777 is flown for this route. Generally, a movie is offered on this route. The average travel time from Amsterdam, Netherlands to Washington, DC is 8 hours and 33 minutes.*
* Some flights must connect with additional service on this airline.
During your Washington vacation, don't miss these great establishments and attractions:
National Museum of Natural History
Before you step inside the museum, stop outside first, on the 9th Street side of the building, to visit the butterfly garden. Four habitats -- wetland, meadow, wood's edge, and urban garden -- are on view, designed to beckon butterflies and visitors alike. The garden is at its best in warm weather, but it's open year-round.Now go inside. Children refer to this Smithsonian showcase as "the dinosaur museum," since there's a dinosaur hall, or sometimes "the elephant museum," since a huge African bush elephant is the first thing you see if you enter from the Mall. Whatever you call it, the National Museum of Natural History is the largest of its kind in the world, and one of the most visited museums in Washington. It contains more than 124 million artifacts and specimens, everything from Ice Age mammoths to the legendary Hope Diamond. The same warning applies here as at the National Museum of American History: You're going to suffer artifact overload, so take a reasoned approach to sightseeing.If you have children, you might want to make your first stop the first-floor Discovery Room, which is filled with creative hands-on exhibits "for children of all ages." Call ahead or inquire at the information desk about hours. Also popular among little kids is the second floor's O. Orkin Insect Zoo , where they enjoy looking at tarantulas, centipedes, and the like, and crawling through a model of an African termite mound. The Natural History museum, like its sister Smithsonian museums, is struggling to overhaul and modernize its exhibits, some of which are quite dated in appearance, if not in the facts presented. So a renovation of the gems and minerals hall has made the Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals worth a stop. You can learn all you want about earth science, from volcanology to the importance of mining. Interactive computers, animated graphics, and a multimedia presentation of the "big picture" story of the earth are some of the things that have moved the exhibit and the museum a bit further into the 21st century.The Kenneth E. Behring Hall of Mammals is an example of an updated section of the museum. Here, visitors can operate interactive dioramas that explain how mammals evolved and adapted to changes in habitat and climate over the course of millions of years. At least 274 models of mammals and a dozen fossils are on display. This exhibit represents the first time the mammal hall has been updated since 1963. Also, don't miss African Voices Hall, which presents the people, cultures, and lives of Africa, through photos, videos, and more than 400 objects.Other Rotunda-level displays include the fossil collection, which traces evolution back billions of years and includes a 3.5-billion-year-old stromatolite (blue-green algae clump) fossil -- one of the earliest signs of life on Earth -- and a 70-million-year-old dinosaur egg. Life in the Ancient Seas features a 100-foot-long mural depicting primitive whales, a life-size walk-around diorama of a 230-million-year-old coral reef, and more than 2,000 fossils that chronicle the evolution of marine life. The Dinosaur Hall displays giant skeletons of creatures that dominated the earth for 140 million years before their extinction about 65 million years ago. Suspended from the ceiling over Dinosaur Hall are replicas of ancient birds, including a life-size model of the pterosaur, which had a 40-foot wingspan. Also residing above this hall is the jaw of an ancient shark, the Carcharodon megalodon, which lived in the oceans 5 million years ago. A monstrous 40-foot-long predator, with teeth 5 to 6 inches long, it could have consumed a Volkswagen Bug in one gulp. In an effort to update this exhibit, the museum in 2001 mounted a digital triceratops (that is, a computerized rendering of that dinosaur); you can manipulate the image to learn more about it.Don't miss the Discovery Center, funded by the Discovery Channel, featuring the Johnson IMAX theater with a six-story-high screen for 2-D and 3-D movies (T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous was among those shown in 2004), a six-story Atrium Cafe with a food court, and expanded museum shops. The museum also offers the small Fossil Café, located within the dinosaur exhibit on the first floor. In this 50-seat cafe, the tables' clear plastic tops are actually fossil cases that present fossilized plants and insects for your inspection as you munch away on smoked turkey sandwiches, goat cheese quiche, and the like.The theater box office is on the first floor of the museum; purchase tickets as early as possible, or at least 30 minutes before the screening. The box office is open daily from 9:45am through the last show. Films are shown continuously throughout the day. Ticket prices are $8 for adults and $6.50 for children (2-12) and seniors 55 or older. On Friday nights from 6 to 10pm, the theater stages live jazz nights, starring excellent local musicians ($5 cover).
Arts & Industries Building
The building is closed for (no reopening date given at press time) an extensive renovation, though its children's theater remains open (read below). Completed in 1881 as the first U.S. National Museum, this redbrick and sandstone structure was the scene of President Garfield's Inaugural Ball. (It looks quite similar to the Castle, so don't be confused; from the Mall, the Arts and Industries Building is the one on the left.) From 1976 through the mid-1990s, it housed exhibits from the 1876 U.S. International Exposition in Philadelphia -- a celebration of America's centennial that featured the latest advances in technology.Singers, dancers, puppeteers, and mimes perform in the Discovery Theater (open all year except Aug, with performances weekdays and on selected Sat). Call tel. 202/357-1500 for show times and ticket information; admission of about $5 is charged.Weather permitting, a 19th-century carousel operates across the street, on the Mall.
National World War II Memorial
When this memorial was dedicated on May 29, 2004, 150,000 people turned out: President Bush; members of Congress; Marine Corps General (retired) P.X. Kelley, who chaired the American Battle Monuments Commission, the group that spearheaded construction of the memorial; actor Tom Hanks and news anchor Tom Brokaw, both of whom had been active in eliciting support for the memorial; and last but most important, thousands of World War II veterans and their families. These legions of veterans, some dressed in uniform, many wearing a cap identifying the name of the veteran's division, turned out with pride, happy to receive the nation's gratitude, 60 years in the making, expressed profoundly in this memorial.Designed by Friedrich St. Florian and funded mostly by private donations, the memorial fits nicely into the landscape between the Washington Monument grounds to the east, and the Lincoln Memorial and its reflecting pool to the west. St. Florian purposely situated the 7 1/2-acre memorial so as not to obstruct this long view down the Mall: Fifty-six 17-foot-high granite pillars representing each state and territory stand to either side of a central plaza and the Rainbow pool. Likewise, 24 bas-relief panels divide down the middle so that 12 line each side of the walkway leading from the entrance at 17th Street; the panels to the left, as you walk toward the center of the memorial, illustrate seminal scenes from the war years as they relate to the Pacific theater: Pearl Harbor, amphibious landing, jungle warfare, a field burial, and so on; the panels to the right are sculptured scenes of war moments related to the Atlantic theater: Rosie the Riveter, Normandy Beach landing, the Battle of the Bulge, the Russians meeting the Americans at the Elbe River. A man named Raymond Kaskey, an architect and sculptor, sculpted these panels based on archival photographs.Large open pavilions stake out the north and south axes of the memorial, and semicircular fountains create waterfalls on either side. Inscriptions at the base of each pavilion fountain mark key battles. Beyond the center Rainbow Pool is a wall of 4,000 gold stars, one star for every 100 soldiers who died in World War II. People often leave photos and mementoes everywhere around the memorial, which the National Park Service gather up daily (the NPS is currently deciding how best to maintain an archive of these mementoes). If you are lucky, you will see World War II veterans when you visit this memorial. My husband and I saw a man of that certain age, fit looking, very tan, and alone, bend down and touch the word "Okinawa" engraved in the fountain coping at the base of the Pacific pavilion, and start to cry.From the 17th Street entrance walk south around the perimeter of the memorial to reach a ranger station, where there are brochures and registry kiosks, the latter for looking up names of veterans. Better information and faster service is available online at www.wwiimemorial.com.
Make your reservations for discount hotel rooms in the
Washington area, including:
George Washington University Inn
Rumor has it that this whitewashed brick inn, another former apartment building, used to be a favorite spot for clandestine trysts for high-society types. These days you're more likely to see Kennedy Center performers and visiting professors. The university purchased the hotel (formerly known as the Inn at Foggy Bottom) in 1994 and renovated it. The most recent refurbishment, in 2001, replaced linens, drapes, and the like in the guest rooms. Free high-speed Internet access was added in 2004.Rooms are a little larger and corridors are a tad narrower than those in a typical hotel, and each room includes a roomy dressing chamber. More than one-third of the units are one-bedroom suites. These are especially spacious, with living rooms that hold a sleeper sofa and a TV hidden in an armoire (there's another in the bedroom). The suites, plus the 16 efficiencies, have kitchens. The spaciousness and the kitchen facilities make this a popular choice for families and for long-term guests.This is a fairly safe and lovely neighborhood, within easy walking distance to Georgetown, the Kennedy Center, and downtown. But keep an eye peeled -- you have to pass through wrought-iron gates into a kind of cul-de-sac to find the inn.Off the lobby is the restaurant, Nectar, which opened in spring 2003.If it's not full, the inn may be willing to offer reduced rates. Mention your affiliation with George Washington University, if you have one, to receive a special "GWU" rate.Facilities: Restaurant (upscale contemporary American); complimentary passes to nearby fitness center; room service; coin-op washer/dryers; same-day laundry/dry cleaning; 5 rooms for those w/limited mobility, 1 with roll-in showers. In room: A/C, TV w/pay movies and Nintendo, 2-line phone w/dataport, fridge, coffeemaker, hair dryer, iron, safe, robes, umbrella, CD player, free high-speed Internet access, microwave.
Four Seasons Hotel
A renovation started in August 2004 is winding up in early 2005, bringing big changes to this Four Seasons, including the gutting of all of the guest rooms in the hotel's main building. In the end, guest rooms will be fewer, but much larger and feature the design of world-famous interior designer Pierre Yves Rochon, who renovated the landmark Four Seasons Georges V Hotel in Paris. The new decor will include custom designed furniture and color schemes of either celadon or purple.The hotel's lobby and lower levels, which hold the restaurant, conference room, spa and exercise center, will stay open throughout the renovation, as will the hotel's auxiliary building of 25 rooms and 35 suites. Certain Four Seasons features always hold true: The hotel continues to attract the rich, the famous, and the powerful, people used to being catered to. Staff members are trained to know the names, preferences, and even allergies of guests, and repeat clientele rely on this discreet attention.The hotel sits at the mouth of Georgetown, backing up against Rock Creek Park and the C&O Canal. The auxiliary building's guest rooms offer state-of-the-art business amenities (each is soundproof and has an office equipped with a fax machine, at least three telephones with two-line speakers, portable telephones, and headsets for private TV listening). Three of the suites have kitchenettes. Original avant-garde artwork from the personal collection of owner William Louis-Dreyfus (yes, Julia's dad) hangs in every room and public space. Transmitters installed throughout the hotel allow you wireless connection to the Internet on your laptop, wherever you go in the hotel. The Four Seasons is always devising new ways to pamper its guests; in 2003 the hotel initiated its "On the Road to Room Service," which allows guests who have been picked up by the hotel's car service, to place a room service order from the limo, and have the meal delivered to their guest room moments after they arrive.Facilities: Formal restaurant (regional American); lounge (for afternoon tea, and cocktails); extensive state-of-the-art fitness club and spa with personal trainers, lap pool, Vichy shower, hydrotherapy, and synchronized massage (2 people work on you at the same time); bike rentals; children's program (various goodies provided, but no organized activities); 24-hr. concierge; complimentary sedan service weekdays within the District; business center; salon; 24-hr. room service; in-room massage; babysitting; same-day laundry/dry cleaning; 7 rooms for those w/limited mobility, some of which have roll-in showers.
Hotel Madera
The Hotel Madera fancies itself as a kind of pied-a-terre, or home away from home, for travelers. But it would be a mistake to think that means the hotel is homey in the traditional sense. This is a boutique hotel, whose sisters, the hotels Rouge, Topaz, Helix, and Monaco, each reviewed elsewhere in this chapter, have all made separate splashes in our fair city. The Madera, likewise, caters to those with avant-garde tastes. The registration desk in the small lobby is covered in leather; a hammered copper mobile of abstract leaflike shapes dangles overhead. The guest rooms are large (this used to be an apartment building), measuring an average 340 square feet. Those on the New Hampshire Avenue side have balconies that offer city views. Rooms at the back of the house, 6th through 10th floors don't have balconies, but do have pretty good views of Rock Creek Park, Georgetown, and the Washington National Cathedral. All rooms are comfortable and furnished with sofas and bed benches, and with beds whose wild-looking headboards are giant dark wood panels inset with a patch of vibrant blue padded mohair. Other fey touches: pillows covered in animal print or satiny fabrics, grass-clothlike wall coverings, and black granite with chrome bathroom vanities. Every guest room has complimentary high-speed Internet access. The "specialty" rooms (a feature of all Kimpton Group hotels) at the Madera include a Nosh Room (studio with kitchenette and grocery shopping service), Flash Room (with personal computer, printer), Strength (has a Nautilus machine) and Cardio (has either a treadmill, exercise bike, or elliptical steps) rooms, and a Screening Room (equipped with a second TV, DVD player, and a library of DVDs).The Madera has an excellent restaurant, Firefly.Facilities: Bar/restaurant (American bistro); access to the posh Sports Club/LA health club at the nearby Ritz-Carlton ($15 per guest per day); 24-hr. concierge; business center; room service (during restaurant hours); same-day laundry/dry cleaning; 6 rooms for those w/limited mobility, all with roll-in showers. In room: A/C, TV w/pay movies, 2-line cordless phones w/dataports, minibar, coffeemaker with Starbucks coffee, hair dryer, iron, safe, robes, umbrella, free high-speed Internet access.
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