NEWSEUM

The next stop in our Washington D.C. trip was the Newseum. This museum is one of only two sites that we had to pay an entrance fee. Here is a great tip: visit the Trusted Tours website here. You can purchase tickets here at discounted prices. Tickets for the Newseum are $20.27 here versus $22.95 on their website. Your ticket is good for two consecutive days' entrance.

On display in the front of the museum are the current day's front page headlines from newspapers from each of the 50 states. More than 800 different newspapers transmit their front pages electronically to the Newseum each day.

When you enter the museum you can't help but look up:

There is an actual news helicopter hanging from the 90-foot ceiling.

There is also a replica of a broadcast satellite hanging from the ceiling.

The Newseum has a portion of the actual Berlin Wall: eight 12-foot-high concrete sections of the wall, each weighing about three tons, the largest display of unaltered portions of the original wall outside of Germany. The exhibit tells the story of how news and information helped topple a closed and oppressive society.

A portion of the mangled communications antenna from the World Trade Center...

is displayed in front of headlines from dozens of worldwide newspapers announcing the 9/11 attacks.

In a display case are the camera, bag and personal items of a photographer who died in the 9/11 attacks doing what was his passion...

Some of his photos of that day survived...

Every day journalists and photographers risk their lives to gather the news in dangerous areas of the world. On display is an armor-reinforced truck, riddled with bullet holes, used by photographers and correspondents in Yugoslavia during the 1990s conflict.

The Journalists Memorial is a soaring, two-story glass structure bearing the names of reporters, photographers, editors and broadcasters who have died in the line of work.

On the sixth floor is the outdoor terrace which gives you fantastic views of the city: Looking to the left up Pennsylvania Avenue gives you a spectacular view of the Capitol Building.

The view to your right down Pennsylvania Avenue shows some of the buildings that make up the Federal Triangle including the Federal Trade Commission, National Archives, Department of Justice and the old Post Office's clock tower.

And the view in front shows the National Gallery of Art.

This was my favorite stop of the trip. I will spend the next several blog posts showing my favorite masterpiece paintings that grace the walls of this spectacular museum.

To learn more about the Newseum visit their website here. If you are hungry when you visit the Newseum, head down to the lower level where The Source by Wolfgang Puck served up the best meal we had during our trip.

All photos in this blog post were taken by my husband and me during our visit in September, 2013.