So, went to Washington ...here's what we did with some reflections on lots of the stops.Like I mentioned yesterday, I'll be following up with a few days of more in-depth posts on some of the vacation things.
- Friday - June 19
- on the train at 3:45am
- listened to Pygmy (review coming next week)
- off the train at 6:30pm
- on the Metro for two transfers
- dinner at Los Lomas - enjoying the universality of Mexican restaurants
- Saturday - June 19
- quick stop at Eastern Market coffee shop for breakfast
- walked to The Mall so The Girl could go for her morning run - ChemGuy wanders The Mall
- the only rainy time of our trip - all dried up by around noon, no more rain until the last night of our trip, amazingly lucky weather for a trip which was pretty much us walking all around the city all the time
- lunch at the American Indian museum - wow of a food court, five stations, each with the cusine of a different Indian region of the US
- through the American Indian museum - top floor boring, dug the Fritz Scholder exhibit - great artwork, interesting commentary
- checked out the Hirshhorn gallery - mostly meh, neat sculpture in the basement, very dated building style from the mid 70's with huge concrete and glass, condensation on the lowest level windows
- checked out the Museum of American History - loved the Star Spangled banner, didn't care about the ruby slippers even though we waited in line for them, cool to see Julia Child's kitchen, neat to see Ira Remson's lab even though the science area was horribly attended and sadly boring
- then the Museum of Natural History - interesting exhibits on ants, gems, Written in Bone about forensics of ancient Jamestown, freaky picture of an Irish Wolfhound
- Sunday - June 21
- quick (1hr) train to Philly
- subway to the ballgame (Philly subway way nastier than DC subway - lots more urine smell, yay!)
- at Citizen's Bank Ballpark two hours before the game - got cheesesteak from Campos (very good), crabfries from somewhere else (very tasty), gelato (also very tasty)
- seats in low rows of the high & distant section of 3rd base side, 2-1 game kind boring, Philly fans nicely rough on Jimmy Rollins to hold up their reputation, nice stadium but kind of generic as far as newer stadia go
- walked around Philly before our 8:50 train back to DC - saw the Comcast center's video wall very cool
- Monday - June 22
- took the subway to Foggy Bottom (decently to the NW of The Mall)
- walked to Watergate - across the street from where my family stayed when we went to Washington in 1990
- checked out the Kennedy Center - awful and big bust of Kennedy - wish we would have known that we could ride up and look out from the roof
- down to the National Academy of Sciences for Einstein and their exhibits - turns out there aren't any exhibits even though they have a sign saying there are and our tour book said there are, all exhibits now in their museum at 500 5th Street
- stopped by Trader Joe's to stock up for the week saw - among the cooler things on our trip - Night at the Museum II: Battle for the Smithsonian IN THE SMITHSONIAN, on their IMAX screen at the Natural History museum
- strolled through the monuments at night, saw WW II, Lincoln, Washington, Einstein, Korea, and Vietnam that night
- Metro's red line up to the National Zoo - next time, go one stop past and walk downhill to the zoo, really enjoyed the pandas & orangutans and watching the beavers get fed (even the fat one who the handlers made work for his food) and the elusive and hertofore unknown lemon-lime Chill
- big uphill walk through Cleveland Park to 2 Amy's Pizza with spectacular pizza, thin wood fired, awesome
- stopped by Whole Foods for more supplies dinner at The Dubliner which is supposed to be the best Irish bar in the US but which we thought was just meh
National Botanical Garden on The Mall - surprisingly beautiful, amazing place, built kind of like The Krohn in Cincy, neat artwork exhibit, windspire- lunch at the American Indian museum again - very cool exhibit on American Indian skateboard culture
- Library of Congress surplus book program - This deserves a huge report because it was easily the coolest part of the trip for either of us, so I'll give more detail on Monday.
- Evening at National's baseball game against Red Sox - annoying Red Sox-heavy crowd, Sox won, we left after 8th inning, nice stadium, good food, great center field pavilion
- early to the Washington Monument to get tickets for a ride up - chose 9:30pm ride in the monument
- stopped by Sherod Brown's office to get free shipping for our Library of Congress discard books
- back to the Library of Congress to turn in our shipping labels (thanks Sherod Brown)
- to the Museum of Art - East building - gorgeous building from IM Pei, neat artwork, some far too modern for my tastes, loved Miro's work
- dinner at the Cafe Mozart - great food, slightly underdressed for the restaurant
- tried to walk around White House - had to go far, far south of South Lawn because the Pres was hosting Congress for a luau
- back to the WW II monument so The Girl could take pics for a friend
- The Girl had a rash break out on the back of her legs (later on her arms) from something that she apparently walked through on the Ellipse
- went up in the Washington Monument at 9:30 - honestly, I think we should have gone during the daytime, somewhat tough to identify items in the distance at night
- back to the Art Museum to see the Matisse cutouts, which were amazing
- to the National Archives to see the Constitution, Bill of Rights, & Declaration - actually, far more interesting were the exhibits downstairs - Taft's bathtub, MacArthur's military records, transcripts from the moon landing, amazing stuff...the big three were okay, but there were so many people that it was tough to spend any time with each one
- walked to the DC Waterfront to try Captain White's seafood - never have I seen seafood so fresh, all caught that morning - never have I been so repulsed by my meal as the soft shell crabs weren't entirely cleaned before they were fried - I nearly barfed
- headed on to the Jefferson Memorial - I love TJ, love him, true pilgrimage to this place
- on around the tidal basin to the FDR memorial - brilliant, very different memorial set up as rooms, wish we'd initially gone through it the right way rather than background, very moving memorial that means more if you read about it in advance
- back to the apartment after a huge walking day to tend to the blisters
- went to the Corcoran Gallery to see the Eggelston and Maya Lin exhibits - loved both, amazing photography from Eggleston, wonderful and revolutionary landscape sculptures from Lin, interesting to see the different between this (our only private, pay gallery - we got in free on Saturdays) and all the free Smithsonian museums, Corcoran is clearly struggling for funding
- through the Renwick Gallery - craft museum with very cool artwork, giant salon very different from the rest of the small museum across the the White House
- lunch at Così - good sammiches
- to the Nat'l Portrait Gallery and Museum of American Art (Reynolds Center) - got through half of one floor of the huge gallery before The Girl got bored (the benedryl for the rash probably didn't help)
- so off to see Up a block from the museum in a big, mall-ish area - very sad, beautiful movie, Katydid was right that it's a kids movie tackling some very mature themes (loss, friendship, family), at it was particularly heartbreaking to be in a relationship with no kids and look to the future
- dinner at the Capital City Brewery which was a solid if unspectacular meal
- on a quick (30-min) train to Baltimore for a baseball game
- got to Camden very early, so walked around Inner Harbor area
- the area between the train station and the stadium was a bad, stereotypical Baltimore from The Wire bad
- Inner Harbor was commercial, mallish - we were left with little to see between run down and commercial
- general blech of Baltimore
- Camden was nice, first of the new-style parks, probably revolutionary when it was built, it's been surpassed now, but it's worth going to just for the revolution that it initially was - best seats of the three games about 25 rows up behind homeplate just on the 1B side - entertained the neighbors with pics of Beaker - 2nd free hat of the trip, though, so there is that
- subway to Arlington
- Tomb of the Unknown soldier for the changing of the guard, interesting to hear captain of guard yelling at the spectators to stand up
- saw a military funeral, didn't want to intrude, saw it from before the formal funeral began, odd to see milling about of 60 uniformed men before the mourners showed up
- onward to the Marine Memorial (Iwo Jima Memorial) - amazing, moving, awesomely oversized statuary
- down to Pentagon City (mall) to walk to the Air Force Memorial - very cool, easy to see from around the city, too
- dinner at The Palm (living steakishly in DC - full review to come on Tuesday or so
- last day in DC
- the the Library of Congress (again) - to see the Jefferson Building, the big one that everybody sees - most beautiful building in all of DC, amazing, wonderful, to stand in the midst of Jefferson's surviving/reconstituted library WOW, neat exhibits on Bob Hope & Pete Seeger
- lunch at Breadline - very tasty sausage sandwich but called a piadine (?)
- back to the Reynolds Center - I could have spent all day here, five floors of artwork, wonderful mixture of modern and old, art and portraiture, amazing stuff on every floor, gorgeous building - especially fond of Bravo & Champions galleries, television USA map, VP & President portraits - The Girl was quickly bored but played along nicely
- on the train at 11am
- off the train at 3am the next morning
- boring, long, cheap, energy efficient
Here's what I've got for next week...
- Monday, more details about the trip - especially the Library of Congress - anything else you want to hear more about?
- Tuesday - reviews of the media involved: Up, Pygmy, Night at the Museum II, Freakonomics Wednesday - Our Year of Living Steakishly continues on vacation
- Thursday - back to regularly unscheduled programming
No comments:
Post a Comment