Wrapping up Washington DC

I arrived in Washington DC yesterday, by way of a lunch stop in suburbia Baltimore. It made for a fairly leisurely day in terms of driving, so I took my time both leaving Philly and getting to my destination, thus the long lunch stop.
I had stopped in that particular spot to have some crabmeat, since I guess the Chesapeake Bay is quite well known for that kind of thing. I have made a resolution to try to stop in local places all over the country to try to sample some of the local cuisine of the area. To be honest, it’s just an excuse to eat some really awesome barbeque in totally random places and eat as little McD’s as possible. As a way to illustrate how serious I am about it, I bought two guides for the trip and one of them was about food.

I didn’t see much of DC, yesterday as I got in about 5pm and most attractions were closed by that time. I spent most of the day trying to connect with my two cousins who live in the city. I have one from either side of my family, Tia from my mom’s and Peter from my dad’s.

I have actually ended up crashing at Tia’s place since she has multiple couches she can offer me. It’s been really cool staying here, the first night she cooked dinner for me, entirely unsolicited, which was really nice of her. I unfortunately have not seen much of my hostess as she has been doing really long sessions of meditative yoga, that start really early in the morning; 5am is when she’s been there the last few days. I have been able to see her in the evening and afternoons, so we have had a pretty good visit. She’s really cool and it’s always great to chill and talk about stuff.

Even with all the time I have just spent doing nothing at Tia’s house, and enjoying every minute, I did manage to get down to the Mall and see a few things. I got to see a couple sections of the Smithsonian, like National Gallery of Art, National Museum of the American Indian, and a small snippet of the Air and Space Museum. I am hoping I can spend some time down there tomorrow and see stuff that I might not have gotten to today.

I managed to get down to the National Gallery of Art which apparently has the only da Vinci painting I the US; something more remarkable in the abstract then in actuality. The painting is done by the great master I just didn’t find it to be his most remarkable work. I would just add that I see da Vinci’s more impressive work still being in the Old World. The rest of the gallery was interesting and I was struck by a bunch of the works there, just not by the ones that are the most hyped.

I then headed over to the National Museum of the American Indian because it was just opened in 2003, as an extension of the Smithsonian collection. Even though there was some really cool exhibits, I was generally disappointed because there was definitely a huge Plains Indian emphasis with a lot of the garments being from those people. Not to say there is not a lot from all over the Americas, there was, it just seemed like there was more time devoted to the Plains then, any other. I suppose it’s a new museum and they will have time to add things as they come in.
From there I was pressed for time so I spent about 10 minutes in the Air and Space Museum, which was definitely pretty cool. They had moved the Wright brother’s plane out of the main foyer, rehabbed it and added a whole exhibit about the brothers. I also saw Spaceship One, the ship that took the X Prize money for being the first privately funded ship to make it to the stratosphere and do it twice in a given period of time. The ship looked somewhat beat up, it was just neat to see something that had gone that far into the sky and hints at possible frequent space travel during my lifetime. The other new addition was from the basket or cabin that was the first balloon to go around the earth non-stop.

After wandering around I headed back toward Tia’s to meet my other cousin Peter for dinner. I hadn’t seen him in at least a couple of years and it was cool to hear what he’s been up to. He was headed overseas to France to get his MBA, at a school that is very well known for its international business emphasis. It sounded he was pretty serious about going to France for a few years, which is in keeping with what I was thinking I was doing with myself with me going to Spain. I hadn’t really ever taken the time to grab a beer with Peter before, it was a good time and something I wouldn’t mind repeating. If I can find a job over in Spain, I told him to look me up and he can come crash on my couch.

I’m sure there is something I have left out this entry, but truthfully this entry has been long enough, I don’t really need to say anything else at this juncture.