Labor Day in DC

This past weekend I had the pleasure of heading to DC to visit Sylvie and Miriam in their new apartment and meet their puppy, Kugel. Oh, and do some touristy things, too. I got in on Saturday morning and our first stop was the International Spy Museum where we participated in Operation Spy - which is a simulated spy mission including rummaging through an office to find official documents and finagling the settings in a listening booth to hear a bugged phone call. It was quite a good time. Here is Sylvie being a spy outside the Spy Museum:

From there we went across the street to the National Portrait Gallery and saw their current photo exhibit. We also went to a great middle eastern place for a late afternoon snack/early dinner. It was delicious food and nice to be able to catch up with Sylvie and Miriam. When we got home I went with Sylvie and Kugel to the park for some fun playtime. Here is a smiley photo of Kugel:


On Sunday morning we went to the Takoma Park Farmer's Market. It was a lovely morning and the produce was outstanding! Here is one table full of 10 different types of tomatoes:

One of the vendors overheard us wondering about Pluots and gave us each one to sample. They were delicious! It's a cross between an apricot and a plum. Yum!

And the flowers were beautiful, too. It was a lovely morning.

After going home and putting away our haul from the market, we headed into the city for some more touristy stops. On our way to the Corcoran Gallery we walked past one side of the White House:

We also walked past the Renwick Gallery of American Craft and stopped in there for a quick look and some AC. It was pretty hot on Sunday. It's a little museum, but it's part of the Smithsonian and it was quite impressive.

At the Corcoran we had fun taking photos in front of this HUGE red wall.


We saw a great photo show of William Eggleston's work. It was a very large exhibit and spanned his entire career. We also took a little time to poke around the permanent collection. It's a really beautiful museum, currently undergoing some renovations, but still worth seeing.

After the Corcoran we walked past the other side of the white house and saw the Obama's garden (watch a great video about it here). We also saw the apiary, but it's not in this photo:

After grabbing a quick bite we decided that we still had some time and walked along the National Mall. We stopped into the National Museum of American History and saw Julia Child's kitchen:

We also waited in line to see The Star Spangled Banner. It was worth the wait. I had seen it years ago when it was still hanging in the front entryway, but was neat to see it again in it's new setting. There is SO much to see it that museum. I will have to come back and really spend some time there the next time I come to town.

We walked a little further down the mall and went to the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden. It's kind of a "sunken garden". Here's a photo of me going down the steps:

And here is Sylvie looking at the wishes on Yoko Ono's Wish Tree for Washington, DC. Anyone who wants to can write a wish on a tag and tie it to the tree. It was so cool to read all of the wishes. Everything from World Peace to wanting a unicorn and in languages from all over the world.

After such a great day of museum-ing and walking all over, we came home and made pizza and salad with our goodies from the farmer's market. The salad had roasted beets, arugula, mixed greens and fresh goat cheese and the pizza had fresh ricotta, tomatoes, peppers, olives and some mozzarella. It was such a delicious ending to a wonderful day. And after dinner we got to watch Mad Men!


On Monday, Labor Day, we headed back downtown to go to the Library of Congress. It's across the street from the Capitol Building, so we decided to stop in there, too. They have a relatively new visitor's center which was quite nice and thoroughly explained the history of the building and of government in the US. We didn't get tour tickets, but it might be something I do when I get back to DC. It was a much cloudier day than the other two days, and I left my camera battery charging at the apartment by accident, so here is an iPhone photo of Sylvie and I in front of the Capitol:

After going through the Capitol Building exhibits, we took a tunnel to the Library of Congress. It is such a beautiful building. We showed up just in time for a tour with a really excellent and passionate tour guide. It was great to get the insider scoop not only on details about the building, but also on the inner workings of the library.

And of course, the librarians had to get a photo at the Library of Congress:

I had a great time catching up with Sylvie and Miriam and also being in DC. It had been quite a few years since I'd been in the Nation's Capital. I hope to get back for another visit sooner rather than later!