Sunday, May 25, 2008

A full day of walking the mall

Today (5/25) Rob and I spent almost 12 hours walking in and around the mall. Our first stop was the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum. Since we hadn't had breakfast we ate there. I had a nice brisket with some mac/cheese and some broccoli. For my brunch dessert I grabbed a really nice looking pudding cup, not like the ones you get at the grocery store...it was really a drink cup filled with pudding, whipped cream and chocolate chips. Yums! However, this smörgåsbord came at a steep price: $18.26. It might be free to go in but it sure as hell isn't free to eat there :)

The museum was really interesting. The first floor had a nice exhibit about a variety of animals from each of the major continents. This was comparable to the exhibits I saw at the Field Museum in Chicago. They also had a number of fossils and life size skeletons of dinosaurs and a timeline which covered the origins of organisms to the end of the dinosaurs in so much as it could. I liked how the exhibits left room for some interpretation and where needed said things like 'this is our best guess' or 'we're not sure but here are two points of view on the issue'. They also did a really good job of re-creating habitat and making the scenes depicted seem realistic. For example, one of them had a cheetah who had pulled an impala up a tree while a hyena was on the floor scrounging for droppings.

After the museum we walked out around the mall some more and hit some stops we'd missed the day before. We wandered through the national sculpture garden first. I just don't get a lot of these sculptures. Most of them just look random to me. I guess I'm not deep enough :) While we passed through the garden we noticed the National Archives building just across the street so we thought we'd pop in really quickly. Unfortunately you can't really do that. There was a 10 minute line to get into the building and then a 30 minute line to get up to see the Documents. I'm sure almost everyone has seen them at one time or another but it's still really neat to be able to see the originals. The Declaration of Independence is pretty faded and had some water marks on it. A few of the words seem to have been retraced or something because they showed up a lot clearer than the others. The constitution is in amazingly good shape for coming from the same time period. A theory I have is that the Declaration had to be hidden away during the war while the Constitution has been publicly visible and cared for the entire time. The last document is the Bill of Rights and it's in a really sad state. The paper seems to be moldy or something and most of the words are illegible. Still, it was really exciting to see the documents and sort of feel the history that surrounds them.

Following our 'quick' detour through the archives we decided to check out some of the other memorials we had missed. The first of these was the Jefferson Memorial. This one is done in the style of the Lincoln memorial and has a pretty nice vantage point on the tidal flats. I liked how this memorial is open air on three sides (around the supporting columns of course) so you got some more breeze and it didn't feel quite as stuffy. Unfortunately I don't think a lot of people get around to this monument because it's off of the beaten path. On the plus side that meant we could take more photos. Also, if you stand on the walkway across the flats from the monument you can watch airplanes come in and the angle at which they fly in makes them look like they are going to run right into the monument. I did not get a picture of this phenomenon because when I tried to take one at a closer vantage point the planes were flying behind trees and it was pretty obvious that the plane was not really anywhere near the monument. Alas...

Just around the bend from the Jefferson monument is the FDR monument. This one is fairly new, having been dedicated in 1997 and doesn't really the style set out by the others. Instead of a single monument it's a timeline walk which looks back at scenes from FDR's 4 terms in office. We, as usual, started on the wrong side so we went back in time much like Michael J in Back to the Future, only on foot instead of a Delorean. Rob really liked it and I like a few of the sculptures but I think I like the monolithic monument style. We both agreed that FDR was one of our greatest presidents. He is the only one who has a monument in D.C. without having a face at Mt. Rushmore.

After completing the loop back to the Washington Monument we decided we should get something to eat. Finding food in D.C. is a huge pain. You'd think with all of the tourism around the mall that restaurants would be plentiful but this is not the case. Most of the buildings are owned by the government and I guess they have cafeterias in them because you can't eat at any of them. We decided to try and find a restaurant that was listed on the map we had but we couldn't find the road we were supposed to be on and somehow ended up at the water's edge where there were a ton of seafood restaurants/shops. Most of these sold both fresh seafood and cooked stuff. We stopped at Jimmy's which we think is more of a Jimmy Woo than a Jimmy smith. I was underwhelmed with all of the things I got except for the sweet rolls. Those were great. Rob had fried scallops and shrimp so of course it was awesome. Afterwards we went back for some soft-serve but I think the milk they use in the mix had gone bad. I'm really not sure that the meal could have been much worse but at least I didn't get sick :)

Part of the reason we were out so late was that Rob wanted to see the monuments at night. Therefore we headed back to the mall to check it out. The Washington monument is lit up really nicely...I wish you could go up there at night because I have a feeling the view would be amazing but I'm guessing national security precludes that. I took some pictures of the monument but I'm not sure how they turned out. I forgot to grab a good tripod so all I had was the little crappy one and it can't handle me putting my camera on the side so I had to take it by hand. Rob and I both spent some time trying to get good pics of the Lincoln Memorial from the Washington one but weren't having much luck so we walked out the WW II memorial again. I got some nice pics there and took some okay ones of the Lincoln Memorial across the reflecting pool. I wish there was some sort of causeway through the middle of the reflecting pool but I guess that would sort of defeat the purpose :) The Lincoln memorial was packed with people but not quite as many as we'd seen during the day. We both tried to get nice pictures of the Washington Memorial in the reflecting pool with the Capitol behind it but there was a fence and some concrete barriers in the way at one place and then the lights from the memorial were causing a halo type effect when I tried to take pictures higher up so I said screw it and just took some of Lincoln bathed in the light.

By this time we were both foot weary and we headed back to the hotel. The subway was almost as far away from the memorial as the hotel but we figured it would be worth it to ride the subway so we headed up to the Foggy Bottom station and then home. I am looking forward to a good night's sleep and hope my feet are well rested for tomorrow.

D

2 comments:

icecreammel said...

Sounds like a fun-filled day in DC! It would be amazing to be so close to such important things from our history.

Glad you didn't try to steal the Declaration of Independence to see if there was a treasure map on the back! ;)

Kimberly said...

So I felt a little lost there--what happened between Salem and D.C.? What happened to Leann? There's like a chapter missing or something!