We are not done yet.

On the contrary, I think we have been invigorated by out close proximity to all the action.  I walked to the Eastern Market at dawn’s early light for some supplies at Trader Joe’s and a few coffee drinks.  Having consumed those in our just-right accommodations, we practically leapt out onto the sidewalk, ready to crawl all over DC for another day.

Stop 1 was a return to the Capitol Welcome Center, a 10-minute walk from our place, to cash in on the Congressional gallery passes that we scored on Monday.  Both houses were in session this morning, so we were confronted with a few options:  House,  Senate, or try to squeeze in both before our 10:30 meeting time with DC art expert and all-around great guy Ken.

With the intention of possibly visiting both, we headed for the Senate side first. It was about 15 minutes before their 10 am start time.  It was possible that we could see the Senators start their session and then hustle over to check out proceedings in the House.

This really wasn’t a good plan.  After surrendering most of our posessions in a check-in station we were directed down several hallways, up and elevator and through several more hallways (all with consistently shiny floors and very solid-looking walls), through a metal detector, and finally into the Gallery of the US Senate Chambers.

It was a quiet place at that time of day, with about 10 other people in the gallery (gallery viewers were outnumbered at least 3 to 1 by people standing in the hallway directing us where to go) and, maybe, about the same number of people on the floor of the chambers.

Many of these people were literally sitting on the floor of the chamber, not displaying much anticipation that anything was going to happen soon. They were wearing blue and looked to be late teenagers.  Reading the Senate information booklet while we waited, we discovered that these were interns in their junior year of high school.  Not too long after we took our seats, right around 10 am, the interns popped up off the floor and took positions by various doors in the chamber.  We took this as a sign that something was about to happen — possibly that the Senators were going to make a grand entrance.

A few more people did trickle in, including a woman wearing a contraption that held a stenographer’s recording device and allowed her to go around keying in what people said.  The Senate information book informed us that recorders like her work in 15-minute shifts and then go back to their offices to immediately to transcribe their notes.

Here is what this recorder transcribed in the minutes that we were there:  1. A grey haired man (our best bet at actually being a Senator for the day — it might have been the Senate President Pro Tempore, or it might have been someone on Vice President Harris’ staff performing her duties for her) banging a gavel, calling the session to order, and announcing a pastor who would be giving the morning’s prayer. 2. The solemn pastor invoking those in the chamber (at this point still dominated by high school junior interns) to use the quiet strength of the Lord to guide their decisions. 3.  A clerk reading two communications, the latter being about the Senate moving directly to executive session to talk about candidates for an upcoming appointment.

Jen asked the last official person we passed before entering the chambers, a lady standing at the top of the stairs if the the Senators would be coming in soon and the lady said yes.  They were just listening to someone talk, she said.  They would be entering the chamber soon.

We read our book.  We found the desks where Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, our Senators from New Hampshire, would be sitting.  We watched the clock as it got closer to our meeting point with Ken.

The interns sat back down on the ground.

We realized it would be impossible to gather our things at the check-in, hustle over to the House of Representatives side and repeat the check-in process, make our way to that gallery to see  if anything more was going on over there.  So, we waited a few more minutes, then gave up.  We retraced our steps through hallways and the elevator, back to the check-in to retrieve our things.  Here we noticed a tv screen showing proceedings in the House, and there was a Representative talking.  It appeared there was something going on over there.  We would later learn that there was a major discussion about the debt ceiling.  There were probably lots of people in the galleries over there checking all that out.

It was a near miss, but still a very interesting look into how things work on Capitol Hill.  As an added bonus, they never collected the gallery passes we received from Rep. Pappas.  They never even looked at them.  So we can go back and check the whole thing out again if we want.

In the meantime, the stage was set for a day of exploring galleries with Ken, who did not seem to mind that we were 17 minutes late meeting with him at the Hirshhorn Museam just one block up from the Air and Space Museum on the National Mall.

And so began a day of getting a little off the main trail of museums in DC.   We had another near miss when we learned the special exhibit at the Hirshhorn was sold out (it didn’t look that crowded there), but then we moved on from main gallies of modern art here to a more intensiave tour of the National Gallery’s Sculpture Garden.

After lunch on the patio of the cafe there, we moved on to the Renwick Gallery, which is Ken’s favorite and is located right next to the White House.  It featured one large, ballroom-sized installation that was a larg net suspended from the ceiling  lit by subtly changing lighting.  It also had on display an assortment of very cool woodwork and pottery.   It was only one floor of galleries, but the time we spent there was worth the walk.

On our way to the Renwick Gallery, we got to peek at the president’s residence, but it was not easy.  There were lots of extra barriers and many security personnel around.   We would later find out that this all had to do with a state dinner that evening to welcom the President and first lady of South Korea.  If we had only stayed around watching for a little while longer we might have gotten invited to the dinner.  Another near miss.

Anyway there was more art to see.  And gift shops.  By now we were walking through the streets of the city part of DC and not around the National Mall.  We made our way to Chinatown and there, in the shadow of the hockey and basketball arena, we found the National Portrait Gallery.  Aside from housing a lot of portraits, this build also had a major collection of American Art, and it also offers a fantastic covered central courtyard where we lounged over iced coffee and continued to get caught up with Ken.

In these galleries we were able to see portraits of all the Presidents (though no official portraits have been painted for Trump or Biden because they are either in office or looking to run again for President).   We saw the famous portrait of Michelle Obama.  We saw lots of work by American artists, and we generally had our artistic appreciation vessels filled up right to the brim.

After that, all that was left was a nice dinner at the Founding Farmers and Distillers restaurant a brief walk from the museum, and then we were saying goodbye to Ken.  We owe him many thanks for taking a day off from work to show us a lot of places (and artwork) we would not have gotten to on our own.  It was a very big hit of a day for us.

We’ve got to give Lanie credit for being a trouper on this vacation.  Without any sisters as moderating influences, she’s been left to bear the full brunt of Bob’s and my travel style.  Today was another day of miles and miles of walking, punctuated with various monuments, museums, and the occasional snack.

We said goodbye to Kathleen and her lovely family this morning and headed into the city for a couple of days at an airbnb on Capitol Hill.  Normally we avoid driving into cities like the plague, but this time we really couldn’t avoid it.  Some may recall an unfortunate episode last time we were in DC, where we failed to read some signs carefully enough and our car got towed to a random nearby street and we had to wander blindly around until we found it.  The issue was that on certain streets at rush hour, the parking lane gets turned into a travel lane.  This time we reaped the benefit of that system, since we arrived just after rush hour so there was still copious parking right on the National Mall.

We started out with monuments — Washington, World War II, Lincoln, Vietnam, Korea.  All of them were flooded with giant mobs of middle school students, but at least we didn’t run into any of our own town’s middle school students.  There were also a large number of Korean people trying to hand us brochures about Jesus.  We weren’t sure whether they’re always at the Mall, or whether they were there specially because the president of South Korea is visiting this week.  But despite the crowds and the Jesus pamphlets, it’s an inspiring feeling to stand at the feet of Lincoln and read the words of the Gettysburg Address carved in marble on the wall.

Some cool stuff we saw at the American History museum: A piece of the original Woodstock stage, C3PO & R2D2, and Jill Biden’s inauguration outfit complete with matching mask.

With some time left on our meter (and the car still accounted for), we started the round of museums.  The great thing about the museums here is that, in addition to being uniformly stunning, they’re all free — so you can make just a quick visit without feeling like you’re wasting money.  Lanie’s top choices were Natural History and Art, but we decided to make a quick stop at the American History museum as we were passing, since Kathleen had recommended it.  This was a very cool museum!  And not at all what we expected.  We saw the original (huge) flag that inspired the national anthem, and the collection of First Lady dresses.  But most of the other exhibits we saw had to do with pop culture, science, and technology.  They were very well designed to draw you in and we ended up spending a lot more time here than we expected (but still not nearly enough to see everything, which was the theme of all the museums we visited).

After a trek back to the car to refill the meter, we retraced our steps yet again to head to Natural History and Art.  We were running out of steam a bit by this point, so we really didn’t begin to make a dent in all the offerings.  I think it would take a month of daily visits to fully appreciate even one of these museums.  But with our energy and our parking meter both running low, and a notification that our airbnb was ready for us, we headed back to the car and made the fortunately uneventful drive to Capitol Hill.

What a gorgeous neighborhood this is!  Quaint brownstones, colorful townhouses, flowering trees, brick walkways — and we even got a parking space.  An hour or two to relax before meeting our niece Kelsey for dinner was just what we needed.

We met Kelsey at Eastern Market, just a few minutes’ walk from our apartment.  This was another great area, with cute shops and restaurants in a pedestrian-friendly block.  We were sufficiently recovered to stroll around for a while before settling down for some Italian food and later, cookies.  It was an early night, but the death march continues tomorrow.

An underarching question marked our firstday touring DC:  Are our legs sore from walking (and running) around New York a few days ago, or are we stiff from sitting in the car through New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland?

We certainly weren’t sore from the cushy reception we received in Bethesda from old friends Kathleen and Daniel and their family.  We will be staying with them for two nights on their trip, and they are quite fun hosts — but, they’re not on Spring Break this week, so we will be hitting DC on our own for a few days.

Alone, that is, except for the beneveolent help of our Congressional delegation from New Hampshire, who have hooked us up with a tour of the US Capitol Building (thanks, Senator Shaheen!) and tickets to the galleries of the House and Sentate (thanks Representative Pappas and the staff intern who brought the passes down to us from his office only a few minutes after a cold-call request phoned in from the Capitol Building Welcome Center).

The tour of the Capitol was a first for all three of us.  Everything is quite shiny in there, and very solid looking.  The tours are run with incredible efficiency.  We entered in a group of about 250 people (the bulk of which were from two large groups of middle schoolers — there are lots of large groups of middle schoolers here), saw a quick movie and then split ourselves into walking groups of about 30 people.  We all got headphones so that we could hear our individual guide speaking to us, and then snaked our way through some corridors of power.  We were divided, wired in, and touring just minutes after the movie ended.

Our walk covered the crypts, where George and Martha Washington were meant to be buried but somehow got out of it; the immense and ornate Rotunda; and statuary hall.  We even got to see both of the statues New Hampshire has contributed to the Congressional  collections — John Stark and Daniel Webster.  Every state gets two statues.  We didn’t know that that before the tour.

At the very end, our tour guide told us about the “call your Congressman” trick to getting gallery passes, and we decided to give it a try.  That all transpired in the time it took Lanie to peruse the gift shop (there’s lots of gift shops here).  Unfortunately, neither house was in session that day; but not unfoturnately, the passes are good for the whole Congressional session.  We’re plan to come back on another day so we can see legislators in action.

From the Capitol we kind of wanted coffee an so we wandered over to the Botanical Gardens, where we found — a coffee bush!  We also walked around in a very steamy enclosure that supported a mini rainforest with an emphasis on orchids.

Other gardens we saw had cacti and hydroponic themes.  We found an ourdoor space with roses in bloom.  Lots of things were blooming all around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The blooms were quite distracting, and it wasn’t until we visited the restaurant at the nearby National Museum of the American Indian that we finally got around to getting coffee.  We had been advised that the food was good at this museum, so we decided to try some corn bread and a sampling of their salads as a late mornng-snack.  Our legs by now were really needing some rest.

 

 

In the museum we found some particularly moving and sobering reminders of how American Indians have been portrayed in mainstream American society.   This was counterbalanced by very serene architecture, landcapaing, and Native American art.

 

After snacking and touring the museum — already our third stop of the day — we were still on the move.  The next point of interest up the street was the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

Both extremely popular and limited in floor space because of a major construction project, the Air and Space Museum was the only place on the National Mall besides the Capitol that required us to reserve an entry time.  While we waited for our 2 pm reservation, we wandered off the Mall for a few blocks to find a quiet place to order and eat a noodle bowl lunch.  We bypassed the many food trucks parked outside of the museums because: 1. they all seem to have exactly the same food; 2. they don’t display their prices.  Our legs weren’t too tired to walk a few blocks for noodles.

That’s not to say we weren’t tired.  Two of us closed our eyes and rested a bit during the planetarium show in the Air and Space Museum, and after an hour or so of touring the halls of this, our fourth major tourist attraction of the day, we were about ready for some ice cream and quiet time under a shady tree on the Mall.

Then, it was time ride the metro back to Bethesda and rest up for another day of DC touring.