Educational Travel to Washington, D.C.

Transform your students’ lives (and maybe your own) with an exceptional educational tour to Washington, D.C.

If you love a secret, the International Spy Museum is the place for you. You’ll be blown away by clandestine antics that you’ve only ever associated with James Bond. But espionage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in the movies. In fact, there’s an entire unseen world that only a real-world agent would know. And now it’s time for you to find out…

From the moment your student tour steps into the museum’s elevator, you’ll feel the urgency as its blue flashing lights tell you that you’ve got a top secret mission ahead. Your first stop? The briefing room where you’ll pick your own secret identity. Keep it memorized so you’ll remain cool under cover and under interrogation. After making your way into the museum, crawl through echoing aluminum ducts. (Tread lightly to keep incognito!) Then covertly enter the School for Spies where you’ll learn to pick locks and scout some 200 gadgets that have kept secret agents in business for years.

Discover how every move can be tracked using a transmitter buried in the heel of a shoe. Look out for a glove pistol used by U.S. Navy personnel during World War II that helped assassins keep both hands free while executing the enemy. And, see a replica of an umbrella used to assassinate a Bulgarian dissident near Waterloo Bridge in 1978 when a tiny ricin pellet was fired from its tip.

As intriguing as these contraptions are, your tour group’s mission is more than just a sneak peek into the world of espionage. It’s about examining history in a new way, too. You’ll be able to better imagine the trepidation felt by agents who smuggled themselves into the West during the Cold War when you learn how spies hid out in the most unlikely places, and you’ll picture the past in a way that no textbook can describe as you navigate through a tunnel like one secretly dug by the CIA in 1954 leading into East Berlin. Step back and envision the immense pressure spies felt safeguarding U.S. secrets when you explore the model of an American Embassy intricately decked with equipment built to block Russia’s KGB infiltration.

As you near the end of your interactive mission, give a thought to one of the greatest spies who ever lived, Virginia Hall. This fearless lady posed as a French dairy farmer during World War II while building resistance networks and scouting drop zones for the Allies. Admire her Empire Medal standing proudly on display and understand why a spy, more than the gadgets, is a country‘s most dangerous weapon.