Archive for April, 2012

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Why my feet hurt so much

April 29, 2012

Tomorrow we leave DC so we needed to cram everything that we could. The Library of Congress was closed which is ok because they don’t carry my book. (Hmph!!) We walked by the LOC but saw a lot more than that:

Capitol South Metro station

Capitol Hill

  • Peace monument
  • Grant monument
  • Garfield monument
  • The other reflecting pool (this one with water!)

US Botanic Garden and Conservatory

National Air and Space Museum

  • Space Ship One
  • Spirit of St. Louis
  • Apollo 11 return capsule
  • Touched a moon rock!
  • Wright flyer
  • Space lab twin
  • There were so many amazing aircraft, i can’t begin to list them.

L’Enfant Plaza Metro station

National Museum American History (briefly, it was very crowded)

  • Instruments (small exhibit! Found more instruments near the lobby but still oddly small)
  • 1933 exhibit

National Gallery of Art

  • Nineteenth century French (including impressionists)
  • Dutch etchings
  • Italian religious paintings (old, ole triptychs)
  • Amazing rotunda and indoor fountain
  • Rembrandt
  • Rodin and Degas sculptures

Oh, and when we walked by the Butterfly Garden today, I realized we walked through it yesterday lunch. This is not the Butterfly Habitat, that was something else that we opted not to do.

Oh, and since I mentioned dinners, tonight we got takeout from Carmine’s, It was a lot of pasta pomodoro. And a fantastic champagne cocktail.

(C, you said you didn’t want to know so stop reading. Everyone else can scroll down.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both days I clocked in over 20k steps and more than 9 miles a day. My feet (at least) look forward to a short walk in the morning and then getting in the car to go to Hartford, Connecticut.

 

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What does it mean?!?

April 29, 2012

C fell back asleep this morning after I left for morning walk. He dreamt of being at home, sitting in his chair, reading. It was a long dream.

I don’t recall any dreams though i slept well. However, every time I see a dog, I want to pet it. There was a little Yorkie across the street, walking kind of crosswise to where he was pointed, like he was in a strong wind, like Bear does. If I hadn’t been so very hungry, I would have snorgled it until it begged for mercy.

We haven’t seen any beagles. I think that is a good thing.

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Some things we did in Washington DC

April 29, 2012

This covers only Friday and Saturday.

Air and Space Museum (Udvar-Hazy Center, near Dulles Airport)

  • Space shuttle Discover ( awesome )
  • Enola Gay
  • Concord
  • SQ-71 with Skunkworks symbol on tail
  • Assorted airplanes, satellites, helicopters, missiles, and things that really didn’t look like they should have flown

Pizza Pi Pizzeria

Metro Center’s huge cavernous multi-level multi-line subway station

National Mall

Washington Monument (closed)

World War II memorial

Reflecting Pool (drained)

Constitution Garden Pond (half drained, smelling of swamp)

The Ellipse (President’s Park, flag football game)

White House South Lawn (busloads of tourists getting pictures of other tourists’ backs)

National Christmas Tree (mostly dead)

William Tecumesh Sherman Statue

Smithsonian Natural History Museum

  • Big elephant display in the rotunda
  • Triceratops (!! I love Tris!!)
  • Assorted other dinosaur bones
  • Fossilized plants (a lot of them)
  • Tiny, tiny horse
  • Giant ground sloth (giant!!!)
  • Assorted other mammals
  • Hope Diamond
  • Rocks from space
  • Assorted other rocks
  • Assorted other gems (Heard in the jewelry area, small child “Is this all treasure?”)
  • Insect zoo (this was strangely neat, I held a lovely caterpillar and we saw butterfly hatchery)
  • Icky mummies

National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden

American Portrait Museum

  • Art of the Video Game (enh)
  • One neat stained glass window
  • Lots and lots of portraits. Really, lots. Winthrop was funny looking.

Spy museum gift shop

Cowgirl Creamery

Dinner with Stacey Banks at Ella’s Pizza and Pasta

Franklin Park*

White House North Lawn*

Sunday morning bells of the Church of Epiphany*

 

*E only.

 

And now we are off to add to this list… Which doesn’t cover the architecture we’ve seen, a whole ‘nother post.

 

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Jaded already

April 28, 2012

We got an early start this morning. That was dumb.

None of the museums open until 10am so we rode the Metro, walked around the mall, saw the Washington Monument, visited the south lawn of the White House, and got very cold, all before hitting the Natural History Museum (dinosaurs!!).

As we were walking along the famous ellipse (well, I’d never heard of it but the hotel said it was famous, I don’t know why a flag football field is famous), on the map we saw another monument marked. I pointed over the trees to a shiny gold something on a pillar. That must be it and I didn’t need to walk to it.

C accused me of being jaded already. (It was about thirty minutes before the museums opened.) It was a little early still.

But he’s kind of right. I think maybe I got a little jaded in Virginia where the trees go from interesting to ubiquitous. The trees lost the awesome specialness when they became freeway-side weeds.

DC is so packed with (big red arrow pointing to amazing stuff!) activities that it is difficult not to feel jaded. Without uniqueness, the forest of museums is hard to appreciate. Even when in a museum, there is the chance that we could be at another museum seeing something more interesting.

It is a sort of opportunity cost with the risk being time and limited next or steps we can take before our feet give way. The rewards are things to learn and see, pictures to take, and new points to talk about.

I’m on vacation. I don’t want to worry about opportunity cost.

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Sore throat

April 28, 2012

20120428-104245.jpgDo you have a sore throat? Scratchy voice? If so, you may be a little horse…