Our Nation's Capital

Patrick's spring break was last week, so I took off two days from school and we flew to Washington for a long weekend. We had a great time staying with friends Steve and Sanne, and we enjoyed all of the free museums, too.

Our first stop was the National Gallery of Art. We spent all day there. The permanent collection showcases lots of French Impressionists, Italians, Dutch, Rodin, that sort of thing. Special exhibitions that we saw included Audubon birds and Dada. When we finally got museumed out, we walked to the Library of Congress to look at the books. (Guess whose idea that was!) Then it was Metro back to meet up with Steve and Sanne for Ethiopian dinner in the Adams Morgan neighborhood.

The next day, we hit up the Botanic Gardens and gawked at their orchids for a while. The Museum of the American Indian (in the background in my photo) was looking crowded, so we walked on to the Hirshhorn and discovered Hiroshi Sugimoto, a very interesting photographer. We then spent an hour at the Sackler Gallery, which featured a gorgeous exhibit of Hokusai's prints and paintings. By then, our feet were getting tired, so we went to the natural history place and caught an IMAX movie about deep sea animals. In the documentary, teams of marine biologists and astrobiologists went hundreds of meters down, exploring what types of life might exist in the environments on other planets, which are sterile compared to a terrestrial rainforest but may be similar to the cold, dark waters deep in our oceans.

Besides walking around the monuments (White House, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, all more attractive at night), the other big tourist thing we did was go to the zoo. We saw the pandas, including the baby (who was trying to sleep and played an adorable game of peek-a-boo, covering and uncovering its eyes with its paw in an attempt to get comfortable). We saw the young elephant, too, and a video of its birth (probably one of the most dramatic moments ever captured on film: 325 pounds dropping in a wet mess from a distressed and flailing mother elephant). But the best part was probably the Bird House, where we walked through a room full of flapping, singing, uncaged birds. There was a similar set up in an outdoor enclosure, where I couldn't stop photographing the ducks. They were so beautiful. Whoever is in charge of duck design deserves a raise. On this blog, I'm only showing two of the half-dozen or so exquisite species that we saw. Their lines are so lovely; their colors are perfectly coordinated; they dabble and dive so sweetly.