Girls Day in DC

The girls and I went to DC this weekend and I thought I'd take you with me.
I hope you're not too tired... we did a lot of walking.
Do you remember the Family Circus cartoons where Jeffy is sent outside to get the mail (or something simple like that) and before he gets there, he manages to wander all over the neighborhood, on things, under things, wherever?
That's pretty much what our recent trip looked like. 

You see, we needed to go to the Natural History Museum.
But we couldn't find the special exhibit we had hoped to see,
so we took a brief gander at the new ocean hall and stopped to say hello to this guy.

Heellllooooo, Miiiiisssteeeeer Whaaaaale
(we're bilingual)

Then it occured to me that the girls had never been to the Freer Gallery and had never seen the peacock room, so we  crossed back over the mall to the Gallery.
If you ever get a chance to see the peacock room I highly recommend it.  It's fascinating.

And it has a great story too, which kind of goes like this...

Mr. Leyland:  I am so incredibly rich and I have so many priceless chinese vases, how shall I display all of them?  I know!  I shall ask my guy to build display shelves.

Construction guy: Sure, Mr L, I got it all under control.

Mr. Leyland:  Now I shall go on a long expensive vacation while you work.

CG:  Not a problem, Mr. L

Weeks pass and all goes well, but unfortunately, Construction Guy can't figure out what color to paint the shelves, so he goes to the resident painter, James Whistler.

CG:  Yo, Whistler!  Ya got any ideas on what color to paint dees?

Whistler:  Don't you worry your little head, I've got a plan... an awful, evil, WONDERFUL plan!

So Whistler paints and paints and stops only to send Mr. Leyland a note saying that he won't even recognize the room when he gets home.

Sure enough... when Mr. Leyland got home, he was ummm... shocked.

Then he got the bill...

I think that's where it all went down the drain.

There were arguments... there was drama... there was even more painting, resulting in a great museum exhibit with a great story.

Here's the real story and some great shots (that I could never get with no flash allowed) of the room.

http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/peacock/default.htm

Here are a few other exhibits worth looking at.

Tired yet?  Have I lost you?

No?

Okay... let's hop on the carousel.

Now, normally, this isn't very exciting, but on this day, the workers were trying to trouble shoot a problem and the girls found themselves whirling around at top speed, then slowing down, then speeding up again.

Best carousel ride ever!!

Hop off the carousel and trek down to the National Gallery of Art. (The modern art side.)

Now, we've been to the NGA a million trillion times, so it's begun to feel like home.

There are a few things we must always do:

1) Ride the light fantastic, aka the light tunnel with the moving walkway

2) Eat lunch... best museum cafeteria on the mall

3) Shop the gift shop

and....

4)  Lose Quincy.... we always, always lose Quincy.  (She is very good at hiding in plain sight.)

It is at this point that I realize that I have not only lost Quincy, but I have lost my cell phone!

Ugh!!

So, once Quincy is found, we retrace our steps, back to the carousel, back to the Freer Gallery,

where a very nice security guard points us toward a gazebo in which he says there is a security office.

Okay... no problem.

At the gazebo we are told to go to the third floor.

HUH?

We're in a gazebo!  Where would the third floor be?

Ohhhh... the third floor down.  Okay.

So, off we went, round and round, down a spiral staircase to the bowels of the universe, or DC.

Instead of being dank and scary... there were even more exhibits of modern art, and a look at the panama canal, and finally a security office, which amazingly actually had my phone!!! 

Not only were we able to find my phone, but we found new exhibits  

and we found the National Gallery of African Art.

We'd never been there!

Bonus!!

By this time, we were pretty tired, and didn't get to see everything, but we're looking forward to going back again and finding more of DC's hidden places.

Thanks for walking with me!