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our nation's capital

I headed north to DC last Saturday for Spring Break with Amy Mo and C-tina and stayed with the Seatons. Many folks have asked me what my favorite part of the trip was and my unequivocal answer is time with the Seatons. I got to have breakfast with Chris every morning since I'm an early riser and chat and catch up, and it was absolutely wonderful. We ate with them every night, went to their new church, Emmanuel, attended their community group on Wednesday, and I learned that Scott and Claire love games just as much as I do. I miss them terribly.

The weather was grey and yucky the majority of the time except for Wednesday afternoon. Monday, we popped into the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History briefly and took a peek at the Hope Diamond and caught a fabulous wildlife photography exhibit. Then we headed to the Holocaust Museum. The last time I was in DC, probably 15 years ago, it had just opened and from what I remember, you had to get tickets 6 months ahead of time. It was a wonderful museum in that really awful, really hard kind of way. Really, the whole experience was ineffable. Maybe another post laster to sort through my thoughts. After 3 1/2 hours there, we headed to the National Gallery of Art and did a whirlwind tour of everything but the Impressionists, where we took some more time because they are my favorite. We were there until closing time and unfortunately missed the special exhibit in the East Wing on the Forest of Fountainebleau.

Tuesday, we headed first thing to the Spy Museum where we spent a good three hours. It was fascinating. Again, like the Holocaust Museum, information overload. After lunch, we went to the Old Post Office and got the bird's eye view of the city. From there, we trekked down Pennsylvania Ave past the Capitol to the Library of Congress. The three main things I wanted to do were take the tour of the Library of Congress, visit the Supreme Court, and check out the Folger Shakespeare library. They all sit adjacent to each other just east of the Capitol. We got to the Library of Congress where Jenny was meeting us and found it to be closed from April 3 to 11. STAB! My hopes were dashed. We regrouped and headed to the Supreme Court, arriving at 3:32. Unfortunately, the last courtroom lecture began at 3:30, so we missed it and weren't able to do more than crane our necks into the courtroom itself. Very disappointing. Shakespeare library didn't happen either. More reasons to go back!Wednesday, we headed down to Old Town Alexandria to stroll around and check out Chris and Jenny's new pad for lunch. It's a really quaint little town. We went to Christ Church, where George Washington worshiped. There, I was able to meander through the trip's requisite graveyard (we didn't make it to Arlington). No one famous buried there that I was able to find. That afternoon, it finally turned sunny and we headed down to the Tidal Basin to check out monument-central and the cherry blossoms. The FDR memorial had not been built when I was last there and I loved it. I thought I knew a lot of the things that FDR had done during the Depression, but I really had no idea the full scope of them and what a great man he was. And the cherry blossoms were beautiful.

Labels: travel

posted by CP @ 9:30 AM 0 thoughts