Hope, Ice Cream, and Modern Art

Such a wonderful, full day!
It began in the National Museum of Natural History. You can't really see it all in one day, so we saw the things that interested us most. Laurie especially wanted to see the Hope diamond.




There are great exhibits of fossilized, extinct animals. I enjoyed all of the exhibits....but the best part was having us all be together!



Posing with a mammoth - look at the size of those tusks!




We all loved seeing the wolverine, and maybe that was our favorite - but...



take a look at this two-toed sloth - it was huge! It looked to be almost the size of a tyrannosaurus rex. Maybe this was our favorite, or maybe we just can't choose one thing.






This is a huge piece of copper as long as a van - it came from the Upper Peninsula!




Jana and I on the mezzanine balcony.


Geocaching out in front of the Museum.






Jana told us about the National Gallery of Art. It has a tunnel over to the East Gallery with a moving walkway and a light show on the ceiling., not to mention an ice cream shop! So we all voted to go over there. It turned out to be the most exciting and engaging part of the whole day. Here's the way Jana described it to Tom:

Not Only! Was Dylan's favorite the art museum. We wanted to just do
a walk-through of the impressionists because of course those are
everyone's favorites. But, the impressionist wing is being renovated,
so they have a temporary home next door in the gallery of modern art.

So, we went through the walkway and down the little elevator with the
secret door and around the corner and up the other elevator, where we
were just outside the impressionists wing.

But Dylan could see through the door into another gallery full of
squiggles and blocks of color, and he went "oooh!" So, we went to
peek in there first. And then that adjoined to another room, and
another and another, and he was so excited we just kept going through
the whole permanent collection of abstract and pop art. The thing
that made him do his little boo-hop across the room to me going
"Auntie Jana! Auntie Jana!" was the Warhol Campbell's Soup can.

And we weren't just looking, he was analyzing what the artist was
trying to do and explaining why it was cool. How one canvas that
looked like a big block of grey with some red symbols on it was the
artist playing with foreground and background, and how an irregular
black polygon lying on top of a white rectangle was symbolic of good
and evil, order and chaos. And, while he was really insightful and
dead-on, he did not take it too seriously -- at one point in his
interpretations I looked at him kinda funny, and he said, "have I gone
too far? Or did you buy that?"

Boo's favorite was this Lichtenstein triptych called "Cow Going
Abstract.". He explained why it was cool separately to each of us:

http://www.artbrokerage.com/artist/piece/8393/Roy-Lichtenstein/Cow-Going-Abstract-I--II--III--Triptych

I'm sure if you ask him, he'll happily tell you why it is cool, too.

We looked for a print of it in the gift shop, but we came up empty.

It was really just a very very neat thing. Who knew??

One of my personal favorites was the pastel ballerina, The Dancer by Auguste Renoir.














Another personal favorite of mine was the Vincent Van Gogh Self-Portrait. It's such a thrill to see the actual, original canvas after a lifetime of looking at prints!






At dinner time we all headed for the Old Ebbit Grill. We finally figured out that the fastest way to get around D.C. is by taxi, so we hailed two cabs and went to dinner.




After dinner we took cabs to Union Station to catch the us for our Monuments by Moonlight tour. The first stop was the Jefferson Memorial.






The Lincoln Memorial is so beautiful all lighted up at night.

Easter Sunday

Dylan Has Landed!


We're all jumping up and down with excitement and delight. In honor of Easter, Jana and Dylan are doing the Bunny Hop.

We loaded their things into the car, and then took the Metro to the Eastern Market Station. The Market was our destination for the afternoon, but first....brunch at the Banana Cafe!

Then off to the Eastern Market - we found a good place to sit and have something cold to drink.

The market has flowers, crafts, foods, and all kinds of wonderful things. Dylan had spotted the Capitol Building on the way over to the Market - he couldn't wait - he wanted to go see it right away. So Laurie, Dylan and Dick walked over to the Capitol, and Jana and I engaged in some serious people-watching.

After they had toured the Capitol grounds, and some of us had walked around the Market looking for a good souvenir, we discovered a Baskin-Robbins kitty corner from the Metro stop. Who wants to pass that up?

The Metro ride back to the Airport was so funny! We were jammed in like sardines, but we all had good seats. Mr. D. wanted to stand up all the way - he enjoyed the jerking around! It was so interesting - two people boarded the train with their bikes! There was really no room, and they held the bikes vertically up im the air - one of them had a wheel rubbing his chin - luckily they were only there for a couple of stops - I'm sure they were not comfortable!

Back at the Airport, we went back to the car and drove to the Comfort Inn in Alexandria.

Rehoboth Beach

Jana's friend Wendy wanted to learn about geocaching. We just happened to need to find a cache in Delaware. It just so happens that one of Jana's favorite road trips is over to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. We had a great trip, with good company, good food, and geocaching success! What could be better?

First of all, we checked out of the Comfort Inn on 13th Street, and moved all of our stuff over to Jana's kitchen. We'll be moving to Arlington tonight because Laurie and Dylan are flying in tomorrow.

Then we picked up Wendy, who lives right in Jana's near neighborhood, and we were off on our adventure! It's an interesting drive. You begin in the Washington/Maryland metroplex, and after crossing the Bay Bridge, you're in the country. The word we used to describe it is "bucolic". Chicken farms, dairy farms, lots of empty land, and a few small towns.

We started geocaching as soon as we crossed the Delaware State line. Five caches were found today, and the newbie found one of them!

Wendy toe-dipping in the Atlantic at Rehoboth Beach.



Jana and Wendy


Rehoboth Beach,Delaware

Good Friday

This is the day that we want to sit up top on the Hop On Hop Off Double Decker Sightseeing bus. Consulting their brochure, it was determined that if we took a cab to the Museum of Women's Art, we could catch the bus there and not have to go all the way to Union Station. When we got there, it was hard to figure out where to wait because there weren't any signs or anything. Reading all of the fine print, we thought we would be better off waiting at the Hotel around the corner. After waiting for more than an hour, we examined the brochure more closely. What we held in our hot little hands was the Winter Schedule, which ended a few days ago. The Summer schedule says that they no longer come this way.
Waiting for the bus that never came!



So, a couple of hours later than we had planned, we took a cab to Union Station and caught a double decker. We weren't able to sit up top right away, but after a bunch of folks exited to go sightseeing, we went up and achieved our goal at long last!
You get a much better view sitting upstairs in the bus. The weather was perfectly wonderful. The sunshine was warm and comfortable. We put on sun screen for the first time in 2010. After yesterday, we felt much more familiar with the city, and recognized mostly everything, remembering what we had heard before. The traffic, of course, was still horrible - stop and go most of the way - but then we weren't driving! No stress!

Traffic, traffic and more traffic - a combo of Cherry Blossom Festival and Spring Break.



Paddle boats on the Tidal Basin



Mob scene at the Lincoln Memorial - swarms of people - it was a never ending stream of people!



Jefferson Memorial



Because of Good Friday, there was a re-enactment of Christ carrying the cross to Golgotha. From the bus, we could see the Roman soldiers leading Christ through the streets of D.C.



A portion of the World War II Memorial



We got off again at Union Station for lunch. It is a beautiful, huge, functional railroad station with shops and restaurants and lovely public spaces on the ground floor.





Downstairs, the Food Court is loud, messy, crowded, noisy, cramped - and did I say loud and crowded? And huge? This picture shows one half of the Food Court - it stretches as far as the eye can see.



After lunch we wanted to switch from the red line to the blue line - that turned out to be easier said than done! I'm sure that the entire bus system was overloaded and overworked because of the massive crowds in town this week - so we tried to be philosophical about the waits! I won't go into all of the details, but we did a lot of philosophical waiting.

Mobs of people enjoying the cherry blossoms.


Judging by the boot on this car, the District Police are serious about enforcing parking regulations!


Our beautiful Capitol Building!


After our bus tour, we met with Jana at the Pentagon Center Mall. Why they have palm trees there is a mystery to me.



One of Jana's favorite places to eat is the Union Street Station in Alexandria. We liked it, too !



These figures were under the stairway, peeking up at the people coming down - you just have to grin.



This was a full, full day - and most of it was very enjoyable!