Washington, DC: Day 3 - at the zoo

Day three was spent at the zoo. Apparently, Wednesday is bring your screaming children to the zoo day. I nearly had a meltdown when some kid was loudly smacking - pounding - on the meerkat glass. That was the tipping point, but was preceded by hours of shrill children. It kind of sets my skin on edge just thinking about it. I eventually calmed down after a sweet, well-behaved child (I had truly forgotten that they actually existed) offered me some unsolicited help finding a hidden chinchilla.

I have to say that, as an animal lover, I was very impressed with this zoo. They clearly put a lot of time and effort into making the animals as comfortable and sane as possible, very often to the inconvenience of the viewing public. There were plenty of places for the animals to hide from the sun and searching eyes of millions of visitors.

The zoo was pretty much all we were able to accomplish on Wednesday. We had an opportunity to catch up with an old friend for dinner - we took the Metro (more on the Metro in a different post) to Virginia. I realize that DC isn't actually a state, but it still amazed me to travel by subway all the way out of the city and into a different state. I'm easily amazed.

Washington, DC: Day 2

Day two was all Smithsonian, all the time. The museums opened at 10:00 am and that was exactly when we walked in the door. Day one was American History, day two was art. We started at the American Art Museum and worked our way through, stopping off in a few sculpture gardens. With so much to see, we had to breeze past some of the art that didn't hold much interest for us. It's true and shocking, I know, to hear that there is some art that does not interest us. There are reasons too numerous and deep to get into here, but we barely gave the Renaissance art a second glance. And after a while, art starts to look the same - the same subjects, the same poses, the same stories. Not that they aren't fantastic on their own, but so much exposure has a sort of numbing effect. In a way, that was a good thing, because it allowed the gems to stand out.

Unfortunately, we did not find those gems until the very last hour. We have to go back on day three for more of the National Portrait Gallery, which is our favorite museum so far. We also visited the National Air and Space Museum. And although we didn't spend too much time there, we took a disproportionate amount of pictures there. I don't take much pleasure in photographing artwork, but airplanes and spacecraft... that's another matter entirely!


























My only real complaint with blogger is that it does not facilitate captions on photos. You just have to imagine what I wanted to say about the photos.

Day three will start with the zoo. There will be pictures!

Washington, DC: Day 1

After a heartbreaking goodbye to our dear dogs, we hit the road for Washington, DC. It still amazes me that we live close enough that we can drive to a real destination in less than five hours. The last time we visited DC we came in on a train. We talked about doing that again, but ultimately decided against it for practical reasons. We did, however, leave our car parked at our Bed & Breakfast. More on that later.

The entire point of this trip was to shuffle around Smithsonian museums, and that is exactly what we have done. We arrived in DC at 2pm, and after getting checked in, unwinding and regrouping from the drive and relearning the Metro system, it was 4pm by the time we actually stepped into our first museum, the National Museum of American History. Please enjoy some photos!










More pictures to come!

Art is everywhere!

North Carolina is spoiling us! Last weekend we drove to Chapel Hill, the third point in the Triangle (with Raleigh and Durham). Each city has plenty to offer; beautiful, historic buildings, arboretums (can't wait for Spring!) and an art museum. The reason we went to Chapel Hill was to visit their art museum - it wasn't quite as nice as the Raleigh museum, but a little bit better than the Duke museum in Durham. I'm overwhelmed by the amount of quality museums at my disposal - I can't tell if the Triangle is especially lucky to have so much art everywhere or if Orlando (and all of Central Florida) is just the cultural wasteland that everyone says it was.

I apologize that there are no photos from Chapel Hill. It was a beautiful city with some truly historic buildings dating back to the late 1700s, but for whatever reason, we neglected to take the time to snap any pictures. We'll be back, and we'll take plenty of pictures next time.