We had a little time to visit with everyone this morning before Charla and Amy dropped us off at the National Museum of American Indians. We had hopes of finding pictures of our great-great-great (not sure how many greats) grandfather’s Cherokee half-brother.
You might have heard of him, Chief Robert Benge. (JK, but you
can google him if you’re interested).
Running out of time due to our reservation at the Capitol, we gave up our search.
After an arduous trek up Capitol Hill (we didn’t realize it was an actual
hill), we drew the short straw and ended up in a tour group with only a handful of people who “understood” English and a half dozen small, very energetic children.
With so many tour groups going through the Capitol at one time, they use a system where everyone wears headphones, but supposedly you can only hear your own tour guide through a microphone she wears (apparently at kids'-mouth-level) on her uniform. We could barely hear our guide over all of the kids yelling in excitement about hearing themselves on their headphones, needing to go to the bathroom and wondering what this or that button would do. The parts of the Capitol we saw were very pretty, but we were expecting to see the senate and house chambers and that was not part of the tour. Afterwards, we ate a very expensive meal at the Capitol cafeteria. Hint: They need a new pastry chef. Carol bought a brownie for us to share, and the nicest thing I can say about it is that it would have fit in perfectly in the fossil exhibit at the Natural History museum.
We caught a few tunes in a March for Jobs rally/protest that was being held across the street from the Capitol. Our itinerary didn't allow for much time to dilly dally, so we trudged on (yes, we were trudging by now) to visit the National Gallery of Art, both the East and West wings. We were interested in works of art by Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Degas and Rembrandt....plus the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as in Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo (but we only found 3 of the 4). However, those were merged in with millions of other pictures and sculptures in many different rooms. We went through with the help of a "Highlights" map, with Kathy pouting a little because Carol and I wouldn't stop at each one she found, and we really did see a lot of beautiful artwork.
To say we continued trudging as we headed to the National Air and Space Museum would be a lie. We were dragging. I was complaining. We didn't want to experience anymore culture today. But we had our itinerary and we needed to stay on schedule!!! We enjoyed it in the long run and LOVED the Diet Cokes we got at the embedded McDonalds at the end of our tour.
We made it to the Metro and successfully arrived in Bethesda, where Carley picked us up and took us back to Charla and John's. We were greeted with appetizers and the smell of steaks and salmon cooking on the grill. It's amazing how family and a fabulous meal can make you feel better.
 |
This was the beautiful scenery we saw every day going to and coming from D.C.
Amy snapped this picture of us after letting us out. Kathy was trying to take a picture of them.
|
 |
| Carol and Diane desperately searching for the Capitol visitor center. |
 |
| Toes at the Capitol. (Picture, if you will, 3 middle aged ladies sitting on the floor sticking their feet in the air.) |
 |
| Painting by Cezanne entitled "Boy in a Red Waistcoat", dated 1888-1890. We think we know where the idea of Woody came from! |
No comments:
Post a Comment