The next morning we decided to head out to the Eastern Market. We walked around there for a few hours and saw some pretty cool stuff and bought a souvenir or two. They were also selling food such as fruits, pastries and fish. The fish place was indoors and man did it smell bad! My feet were already starting to hurt and so I knew this was going to be a very long day.
After we left there, we decided to head over to the Capital building. It was Sunday and so it was closed but we did get to go to the Botanical Gardens. It was indoors which was nice to get out of the sun.
The Rolling Thunder Rally began while we were walking around. It surprised me that they did it on Sunday instead of on Memorial Day. I think I saw more motorcycles that day than I had seen in my entire life. We were trying to cross the street but had to wait until a group of them ended up getting stopped at a red light. They just kept coming and there was so many of them I was beginning to wonder if they were just going around the block in circles. But no there were just thousands of them.
We decided to visit the National Gallery of Art next. We started out at the smaller and newer East building. My feet were killing me and so I told Daniel to go have fun and I just sat down in the main area to relax. I thought my shoes that I had brought with me were comfortable but I guess I was wrong. At one point they probably were quite comfy but I suppose they are getting kinda old now. Daniel enjoyed seeing the art in the East building but said that he really wanted to see some paintings that were housed in the West building.
We headed over to that building through the underground tunnel where they had one of those cool conveyor belt systems that you walk on. Except this one was really cool because it was really bouncy and soft on my feet. I guess I'm not the only one who's feet get tired. The main building of the the National Gallery of Art was huge. (Daniel is taking over typing about the art stuff).
We looked through various paintings and saw the only Da Vinci painting in the America's. Being somewhat of an art fan, I got to see some pointillism paintings (my favorite style) by Seurat, Signac, and Theo van Rysselberghe that I enjoyed very much.
Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy - Seurat
The Lighthouse at Honfleur - Seurat
These actually remind my of my favorite painting that I saw in the National Gallery in London. It is by Theo van Rysselberghe and is called a Coastal Scene. While its not the most technical painting and doesn't nearly rank up at the top in terms of skill, popularity or anything, I like it for some silly reasons. Its really the first painting I saw that really struck me. I was walking through the National Gallery seeing the popular paintings when I saw this painting next to the door. It stopped me in my tracks. I just sat and stared at it for 10 minutes and imagined that this was similar to where the Dark is Rising books (particularly Greenwitch) took place.
I also have to comment on why I like pointillism. I view life like a pointillism painting. As with most art, our tendency is to get up close and look and admire the detail. With a pointillism painting, if you get too close, you just see a bunch of dots. There is no detail. You have to force yourself to step back and look at the whole picture. Likewise, I'd imagine painting something like this takes a lot of patience. While the whole painting is just a series of separate and distinct dots, whether they be black or white or blue or green, if we take a step back, we can see that each one is there for a reason. It fits into the whole picture.
Sorry for the soapbox. I'll get back to the DC trip. I also wanted to see a series of 4 paintings, The Voyage of Life, by Thomas Cole. We made our way to where I anticipate it being and all I can see is this sign!
I was so devastated that the 4 paintings that I really wanted to see were "temporarily closed". Thankfully, my lovely wife forced me to go ask the service desk if it was on display. Luckily they were. She gave us directions to the temporary location and off we went. I enjoyed seeing the originals of the paintings that I have had framed for several years. (I'm now reliquishing the computer to Laura).
We started getting really hungry and so I decided I wanted Fuddruckers. Our two year anniversary was coming up in a few days and Fuddruckers was where we went on our first date. So we headed up to Chinatown to eat at Fuddruckers. Daniel made fun of me because most people go to Chinatown to eat the great chinese food, but we ate at Fuddruckers! While we were heading there, Daniel noticed that I was really red on my neck. It turns out that I somehow managed to burn one side of my neck and arm and the other side was not burned at all. Although I am glad that I am a little more tan now, I still wish I could have gotten a little tan on the other side of my body too.
Next we decided to head over to the National Archives Museum. I didn't expect to have to wait in line to get in and it was very hot outside. This probably did not help my burn at all. At first when we got in we decided to just walk about and check out the museum part first before heading over to the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. We got to the main area right as they were closing so we only had a few minutes to browse. They keep it really dark in there to preserve the documents and you have a bunch of people trying to take pictures without their flash. Inevitably they get crappy blurry photos, so Daniel had fun showing me how to configure a simple camera to get a decent photo in those situations. He's such a nerd...I love it.
We were planning on attending the Memorial Day Concert held on the lawn of the Capital building until we saw the line to get through the metal detectors. My feet were hurting so bad now that I could barely walk and there was no way I was going to wait in that line and so we just sat down outside on the grass. We figured we could hear it just as well from where we were sitting. Finally, after the concert started, one of the lines got a lot shorter and so Daniel convinced me to go ahead and go inside to the concert area. We ended up sitting so far back that we really couldn't see the stage at all but they did have a huge screen that we were able to view. We got to watch Gladys Knight, Idina Menzel (Wicked), Rodney Atkins, and Sara Brightman perform as well as listen to Colin Powell and several others speak. Overall, it was a fun evening. The capital building sure is beautiful when it is all lit up.
