National Air and Space Museum

The National Air and Space Museum is home to the world’s largest collection of historic air and spacecraft and should be the first port of call for any bone fide aviation enthusiast visiting Washington. This exceptional museum attracts an impressive 8 million visitors every year. Happily, they don’t all descend at once so visitors can take their time browsing the 22 informative exhibition spaces.For a comprehensive overview, begin at the Milestones of Flight exhibit. This cavernous hall is home to the iconic Spirit of St Louis, which Charles Lindbergh flew on the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris in 1927. Other highlights in this section include the Apollo 11 Command Module and a piece of 4-billion-year-old moon rock. To discover more about the lunar landings, head to the Apollo to the Moon exhibit and examine an F-1 rocket engine and the Lunar Roving Vehicle. In the Early Flight section, view a quirky array of historic aircraft including the Ecker Flying Boat and the world’s first military aeroplane, the 1909 Wright Military Flyer.Families should make a beeline for How Things Fly. Exactly as the name suggests, this interactive exhibit uses hands-on experiments to demonstrate the fundamentals of flight. Discover how you become weightless in space, take control of a cockpit or learn about what’s happening in the International Space Station.Refuel in the café then catch a space-related film in the onsite IMAX cinema. Finally, explore the cosmos in the high-tech Albert Einstein Planetarium – definitely not to be missed!The museum holds a number of free lectures and events throughout the year. One of the most popular is the weekly Ask the Expert lecture series which sees a variety of experts discuss the history of a particular museum artefact.If all of this has left you wanting more, visit the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Located in Dulles International Airport, this sister museum comes under the umbrella of the National Air and Space Museum and holds a marvellous collection of aviation artefacts including a Concorde and the space shuttle Discovery.