Around DC...The Grand and Hilarious

Amy wanted to do a little tour of her old haunts in DC, as she worked here as an aide to Senator Alan Cranston when she was 20, back in 1978. We found her old apartment house, just east of the Capitol. Amy said the house looked exactly the same, although the neighborhood has gentrified quite a bit. It used to be quite the low rent district, but now is obviously high rent.

We walked around the Capitol building, quite beautiful, but still with all sorts of bleachers and seats on the west side from yesterday's Inauguration. We then went to the National Gallery. The east building had some wonderful French paintings, all fairly small, therefor the exhibit (which is permanent) was called the Small French Painting Exhibit. They were wonderful small paintings by many French masters. There was also an exhibit of art from Pompeii.

From here we took the underground passage to the main building of the National Gallery. There are many famous paintings here, but my favorites are the Impressionists, especially Van Gogh and Gauguin. There were three Vermeer paintings, quite remarkable when you realize that there are only 33 of his paintings in existance. There was also many Rembrandts and a da Vinci. In fact, there were thousands of great paintings, way too many to see on one visit.

On the street outside the National Gallery were all sorts of vendors selling Obama souvenirs. You want an Obama souvenir? There is everything imaginable...t shirts, sweat shirts (hoodies and non hoodies), baseball hats, cold weather skull caps, sweaters, scarfs, buttons, key chains, posters, bracelets, mouse pads, head warmers, magnets (large and small)...you name it, they have it. There seem to be two kind of vendors; the official kind, in nice lighted trailers, with both Obama souvenirs and DC souvenirs...these vendors are all Koreans and seem to be here all the time. Then there are the other vendors, who pull up in the cars or trucks, put up a card table and sell t shirts and buttons. These are all African Americans and may or may not be official. They are more fun to buy from because they have some pretty unusual stuff (the weirdest being a t shirt with a flying Obama with a Superman outfit, flying with a basketball towards a basket) and you can always bargain with them.

Our next stop was the Natural History museum. Great place! They have all sorts of full dinosaur skeletons, a great gem exhibit and the actual Hope Diamond (how appropriate is THAT??), the largest diamond in the world.

From here we took the Metro up to DuPont circle and the Phillips Museum, which I think is Amy's favorite. They have the famous Renoir here of the Boat Party, but by this time I was about Museumed out, so Amy sent me off to find a coffee shop, as we were a might peckish by this time. But there wasn't much here, except a very crowded Starbucks, so we slowly walked all the way back to the White House, then the Washington Monument and then L'Enfant Plaza, where we took the Metro back to Vienna, VA, after about 9 hours of museum looking and walking (about 8 miles, give or take). The view from the Washington Monument was spectacular and I couldn't help to think what a great country we live in, how we are able to transfer power so easily and peacefully, how our ideals and the idea of America truly is great and the envy of the world.