Washington DC

After getting new tires on our house in Charlottesville, we cruised late in the day to the Elks club in Arlington, VA. The club was easy to find, but had two large functions in progress when we arrived. After a little guidance, we found the spaces for RVs at the back of the lot.

Washington gets so much attention in normal life that it seems there's little new to say about the landmarks here. As with the crowds at Monticello, Washington was packed at this time of year, as people tried to get in the last of their Easter vacation in the city. Finding parking was difficult. We finally found a tiny space near the Capitol, with a police car adjacent, who told us we were legally parked.

We decided to take a bus tour to get a glimpse of a lot of things in a relatively short time period. Having lots of choices for this, we chose a double-decker bus. Due to the weather, we were unable to get our money's worth, it was too cold and rainy to sit outside on top. The bus tour allows as many exits and returns to the route as you want, so stopping to explore is pretty easy. One alternative was "ducks", like the ones in Wisconsin Dells, which both drive around and cruise on the river.

Our main attraction here was Consuelo's nephew Gabe, who is doing a 3 month internship in terrorism research with a group here in Washington. He's finding this interesting, but it has not attracted him into this business. He plans to return to Naples, FL, and continue towards a teaching position there. Gabe has had some time to explore Washington, but he's no tour guide. We had fun together.

There's lots of good places to eat here. We chose to get off at Adams Morgan, near Embassy Row, where there was a choice of international cuisine, from which Gabe chose an Indian restaurant which had a nice buffet.

Afterward we hopped back on the bus and rode to the Lincoln Memorial. After touring the memorial itself, reading both the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln's 2nd inaugural speech, we walked the length of the reflecting pool, stopping to visit the Viet Nam Veteran's memorials, finally arriving at the Smithsonian near the Castle. Here we split up, as Consuelo wanted to see the Holocaust Museum, and Gabe and I went to see the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Museum, which was closed. Several museums were closed for renovation, including the Smithsonian American History museum.

Instead we went to the Hirshhorn Art Museum which I enjoyed. The Hirshhorn has a large collection of 20th century art in many different media. Groups of young people were mesmerized in front of the multi-screen video display. Another group was following the long, intricate video of a Rube Goldberg setup going through its crazy paces. I was most intrigued by the art that wove together form and color into interesting pieces, the sculptures, and some of the mobiles. I did not care for the artworks that seemed to me to try to say as little as possible, appearing to me as preparation of the canvas for something yet to be created.

Afterward, Gabe and I walked down to the Air and Space museum, as he had already visited the Freer Art Museum. I find the artifacts in Air and Space interesting, but I found that there was a relatively small collection of items from the American History Museum in one corner of the building. A long line was queued, but moved fairly quickly through the exhibit. Many of the artifacts here were old, like Lincoln's hat and Helen Keller's watch. The ones I found most interesting were those from my lifetime, icons of my past that appeared here in person. Things like Archie Bunker's chair, Carl Yazstremski's batting helmet, and R2D2 from Star Wars. It's interesting to see what museum curators decide are the important artifacts from my time period to represent the culture I have been living through.

Consuelo found the Holocaust Museum, but the main exhibit was sold out for the day, so she could not see it. Instead, she toured an exhibit describing a young boy's life as it progressed from a middle class home to life in the ghetto, where signs of "No Jews Allowed" were displayed, to life in a concentration camp, separated with his father from his sister and mother. He and his father survived the camp, but they never saw his sister or mother again. The building was beautiful, but sparse. The gift shop was an education on the holocaust in itself.

We caught the bus back to Union Station and walked back to our car. On the way, we saw a wedding party lining up at a fountain in front of the Capitol for wedding photos. We returned to our little home in Arlington to talk, eat and play cards with Gabe.

On Sunday, we had planned to do some more touring, but the weather was nasty, raining nearly all day. Gabe came over around 5:30 for dinner and more card games. Consuelo dug a great pork roast out of the freezer and added Cuban fixin's to it.

We had planned to leave on Monday, but the storm was throwing 40-60 mph winds around the entire east coast, toppling trees and putting out power in the region. We stayed put, only venturing out for fabric shopping at G Street and finding a Panera's for lunch, with free Wifi, so we could get and send mail, and find a place to stay Tuesday night on the web.