You can't always get what you want
. . . Well that's annoying. Apparently, while I do have a connection here at the hotel, it's pretty safe to say that it sucks. I get knocked off at the drop of a hat and then it takes forever to load the damn page. I had gone and bought a cable so I could share the pictures I've already taken with you guys but there's no way I can upload them now. Ah well, I'll just have to do that when I get home. Blah.
Anyway, the trip has been pretty cool so far. The time change is still kicking my ass so I didn't actually crawl out of bed until sometime around noon. I put on my walking shoes and headed out into the world and actually managed to see quite a bit. Our hotel is pretty much smack in the middle of several Smithsonian buildings and galleries so I can pretty much wander down a few blocks and find something interesting. Spent a couple of hours in these two sculpture gardens (whose names escape me at the moment) before I meandered around to the Smithsonian castle. Interesting fact: The gardens in front of the Smithsonian castle are actually rooftop gardens even though they're level with the rest of the property. Beneath them is a network of interconnected museums. I wandered through the section that contained artwork and artifacts largely from India and China. One of the exhibits that I thought was really neat was based on a chinese folk tale about a group of monkeys that worked together to try and capture the moon on the surface of a pond. The exhibit is basically a massive chain that stretches from the skylight to the bottom of the third floor made of 21 representations of the word "monkey" in different languages.
After that I made a quick pass through the Smithsonian castle (awesome architecture in there), and walked across the lawn to the Natural History Museum. I never really thought about it but in some ways it's very much a kids museum. There's lots of little nooks and crannies and random activities there to appeal to them. Of course the one thing that was purely adult (at least in my opinion) was the exhibit in the gem room where they keep the Hope diamond. I've never seen so many people so awestruck by what amounts to a very large, admittedly expensive, rock. But then, I've never seen the attraction to big sparkly gems.
I still haven't decided what I'm going to do for the rest of the trip but I did manage to snag a brochure detailing what there is in the other nearby museums so for now I'm just going to play it by ear.
Anyway, the trip has been pretty cool so far. The time change is still kicking my ass so I didn't actually crawl out of bed until sometime around noon. I put on my walking shoes and headed out into the world and actually managed to see quite a bit. Our hotel is pretty much smack in the middle of several Smithsonian buildings and galleries so I can pretty much wander down a few blocks and find something interesting. Spent a couple of hours in these two sculpture gardens (whose names escape me at the moment) before I meandered around to the Smithsonian castle. Interesting fact: The gardens in front of the Smithsonian castle are actually rooftop gardens even though they're level with the rest of the property. Beneath them is a network of interconnected museums. I wandered through the section that contained artwork and artifacts largely from India and China. One of the exhibits that I thought was really neat was based on a chinese folk tale about a group of monkeys that worked together to try and capture the moon on the surface of a pond. The exhibit is basically a massive chain that stretches from the skylight to the bottom of the third floor made of 21 representations of the word "monkey" in different languages.
After that I made a quick pass through the Smithsonian castle (awesome architecture in there), and walked across the lawn to the Natural History Museum. I never really thought about it but in some ways it's very much a kids museum. There's lots of little nooks and crannies and random activities there to appeal to them. Of course the one thing that was purely adult (at least in my opinion) was the exhibit in the gem room where they keep the Hope diamond. I've never seen so many people so awestruck by what amounts to a very large, admittedly expensive, rock. But then, I've never seen the attraction to big sparkly gems.
I still haven't decided what I'm going to do for the rest of the trip but I did manage to snag a brochure detailing what there is in the other nearby museums so for now I'm just going to play it by ear.