Our Mini Vacation in Washington DC Two Weeks Ago

We wanted to take a short vacation, that did not require too much planning or many hours flying. So we decided to go to Washington DC—we have not seen our friends there for awhile and there is no shortage of things to do in the area.

Admittedly we still did some planning. For example, we tried to come up with some places we wanted to visit, and prioritize them. Two things came up to the top—Frederick Douglas’s house for Nick and Ford’s Theater for me. Needless to say, we managed to make it to neither one of those two locations. Luckily, we still had a lot of fun doing other things.

Friday was a hodgepodge of interesting places around the National Mall. Walking through the Lafayette Square, we went inside St. John’s Church. (In case it is hard to read the plaque in the photo below, it says that every U.S. President "since President James Madison has attended occasional services here.")

After a required nod to the White House, accompanied by many laments that we did not get a spot on a White House tour, we headed to the Museum of American History.

Far from trying to see the entire collection of this museum, we went for what we considered the highlights, and the Lincoln room was definitely one of them. We saw two original casts of Lincoln’s face, and the original cast of his hands. (Later in the American Art Museum, we saw copies, and were glad that we have seen the originals. The copies had a lot less details.) Other items of note in this exhibit included the top hat that Lincoln wore often, including the night of this murder, a cuff stained with Lincoln’s blood that belonged to an actress who ran up to give him water and held his head after the shots have been fired, a line up of Lincoln’s photographs, where one clearly sees an increase in aging that the presidency and the war have inflicted on him.

In the same museum, we carefully examined Julia Child’s kitchen and determined that she had way too many knives.

The next stop on our trip was the Natural History Museum. Here we spent most of our time looking at dinosaurs. On our way to see moonstones, we joined a large crowd of people to take a peek at the Hope Diamond.

Exhausted by all the history, we headed to what is supposed to be the best cafeteria in all the Smithsonian Museums for lunch—the café inside the American Indian Museum. We spent almost half an hour deciding what to eat, and can now confirm that the café was well worth the extra walk.

After an unsuccessful attempt to visit Ford’s Theater, where Lincoln was killed, we headed to the American Art Museum. My primary goal there was to see John LaFarge’s stained glass windows, commissioned by Frederick Ames for his fancy house that still stands on Dartmouth Street in Boston.

Other memorable items in this museum included several works by Daniel Chester French and August Saint-Gaudens, the last portrait of John Adams painted by Gilbert Stuart, several portraits by John Singleton Copley, and the original portrait of Benjamin Franklin that you see on one hundred dollar bills.

Nick ventured to the National Archives for a peek at the original copy of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, while I got a head start socializing with friends.

After dinner we all headed to the Lincoln Memorial. Unfortunately it was far from deserted, but we still enjoyed the experience and the view.

Before retiring for the day, we also made a stop at the FDR Memorial, which Nick and I have not seen before.

Saturday began with an amazing breakfast cooked up by our hosts that included pancakes and home grown strawberries. (How much better can it really get!) Our next touristy activity turned out to be a visit to the Udvar-Hazy Center—the relatively new wing of the Air and Space Museum. As expected, my favorite part of the museum was the space section, where we got to see the Gemini VII command module and the boiler plate Apollo command module with floatation devices attached that came from the actual Apollo 11 command module.

Yet the funniest items in this exhibit were tubes of cosmonaut food.

Later in the day, Nick and I tried unsuccessfully to visit the National Art Gallery. After a quick, mandatory stop at the Air and Space Museum on the National Mall, where I spent some quality time staring into the actual Apollo 11 command module, we walked around the grounds around the US Capitol Building.

Here are some fun facts revealed to me by the AIA Guide--an impulse purchase I made early Friday.

• The Ulysses S. Grant statue in front of the Capitol is the tallest equestrian statue in the city, and only second tallest in the world—the first being the statue of Emmanuel in Rome.
• The reflecting pool in front of the Capitol lies on top of the tunnel that carries US Highway 395 underneath the mall. The pool was put because nothing could be planted there.
• The terracing and the layout of the Capitol grounds was designed by none other than Frederick Law Olmstead, whom we know and love in Boston for creating the landscaping of the Emerald Necklace, including the Back Bay Fens.

We tried but failed to see a Frederic Auguste Bartholdi fountain a block away from the Capitol—it was removed for restoration.

On Sunday we sadly bid goodbye to Julie and Andy, picked up a Zipcar at the Union Station and drove off to Virginia. (Nick and I never stop to marvel at how wonderful the Zipcar concept and service is. Here we were in a city we did not even live in, and here was a great car waiting for us at the perfect location.)

In preparation for our visit to Fredericksburg, we listened to Shelby Foote’s Civil War, which promptly put me to sleep—shameful but not disastrous, because Nick made an excellent tour guide once we were on location.

We climbed Marye’s Heights and looked down at the town of Fredericksburg below.

From this excellent position, the Confederate Army was able to completely overpower the Union soldiers as they tried very unsuccessfully to cross the Rappahannock River and take the hills. Our view of the river was very different as the hills have overgrown with trees, whereas back in the 19th century they were almost bare.

After a quick lunch, we visited Chatham, a beautiful Georgian-style house built in the second half of the 18th century overlooking the town of Fredericksburg and the Rappahannock River. Most notably, Chatham served as the headquarters for the Union army during the Civil War and doubled up as a hospital after Union’s disastrous defeat in the battle of Fredericksburg in November of 1862. Walt Whitman came here after seeing his brother’s name on the list of casualties. Both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln have visited the house at different times, while Robert E. Lee refused to order artillery fire onto it because it was here that he had courted his wife. Unexpectedly we got a tour of the upper floor of the house, and it turned out that the house is much smaller than it appears to be from outside.

From Fredericksburg, we drove straight to Monticello, but the gates to Jefferson’s plantation closed just before we got there, so we had to delay our visit till Monday morning. Instead, we walked around the University of Virginia campus, admiring the Rotunda and the Pavilions Jefferson designed.

Monday morning turned out to be relatively cold and rainy, but the weather did not deter us from touring Monticello. The house tour led us through most rooms on the main floor, including notably Jefferson’s bedroom and his library. After strolling around the gardens surrounding the house, we left the top of the “Little Mountain” to walk by Jefferson’s grave before heading back to the car.

We considered but decided against making another attempt to visit Ford’s Theater. Instead we stopped for lunch and had an uneventful, though extremely rainy drive back to the Union Station. We will have to come back again soon in order to

• prevent Chester (one of Julie’s cats) from sleeping his rightful bed (the one in the guest room)
• play with Loki (Gayle’s dog)
• visit Ford’s Theater and its museum
• visit Frederick Douglas’s house
• tour Monticello when it is not raining cats and dogs
• visit Appomattox
• explore more battlefields around Frederickson and Chancellorsville
• take a guided campus tour of the University of Virginia

The list goes on and on. We will just have to return.

Playing "Ketchup"

My previous post was about the Olympic Games—that was certainly a long while back, almost two month ago now. Let’s recap before I move on to the more current events.

I celebrated my birthday. And when I say “celebrated”, I really mean it. We actually threw a little party at our house, with food, and guests, and cake. Cake! The reviews for the cake were rather flattering, so I promise to proudly post the recipe.

The Back Bay Fens flooded,



then burned,

Originally uploaded by Ol' Mr Boston

then bloomed,

and is now freshly green. And then Eric and I saw two turtles in the Muddy River.

Nick has been talking about seeing turtles for several years now, but this is the first time I have seen any. Spring came to Boston early this year, and it has been beautiful.

The Boston Marathon has come and gone--the stress and excitement now replaced by a sense of pride and accomplishment, and exhaustion. (I invite you to read about all the details of my Boston Marathon run this year in my "Marathon Post".)

The weeks after the marathon left me so tired as I never was even while training, and as a result I have not even attempted to achieve anything (outside my job of course) since.

Nick and I spent a day at the Charlestown Navy Yard, touring the USS Constitution (world’s “oldest floating commissioned naval vessel”) and USS Cassin Young. However, the visit may warrant its own blog post.