Touring DC with Melissa

A few weeks ago (OK, probably a month ago) my sister Melissa came to DC for a weekend and we did some touring around. Surprisingly, she had never been to DC but had always wanted to come out.

I am always apprehensive when folks come to visit, because I like to have a plan of some sort for a visit. Luckily, DC is pretty easy for that, there are always a bunch of things to do or see. She came the weekend that Nebraska played Texas, so that was one good event (already blogged about: "Niles Paul, you are breaking my heart . . . . ."); the rest of the time we hit the museums and the monuments on the mall. We also had an opportunity to visit one of her best friend's daughters that was studying at Georgetown.

On the first day, we did a quick tour of a couple of Smithsonian Museums. The paintings that were on display were from the collections of George Lucas (the man that killed Star Wars) and Steven Spielberg (Indiana Jones and the savior of Star Wars). There are a couple of paintings that I really enjoyed looking at:

http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/online/tellingstories/

The first one was the Norman Rockwell's "Boy on a High Dive"; it shows a kid on the edge of a high dive, to me this signified taking a new risk or meeting life's next adventure. The second one was "Back to Civvies", showing a young man that has come back from WW II and nothing really seems to fit. That was very poignant to me, I think there are a couple of generations that are going to go through the rest of their lives where nothing seems to fit.

We also went to the Smithsonian Museum of American History, there are a lot of displays of Americana here: Julia Child's kitchen and the First Ladies inauguration dresses as well as a display of self driving vehicles jumped out at me. The final museum we went to was the original Smithsonian Castle, we went there because it was towards the end of the day and it was close to the metro stop. The display that I really connected with was a display of Madeline Albright's broaches and pins. These were the pins that she would wear at different events throughout her life, all the pins had a significance. For example, when she was the Ambassador to the UN, and was sitting next to Saddam Hussein, she wore a snake on her lapel (?) because Saddam had called her a snake in an earlier encounter. When she was being asked to solve a huge problem, she would wear a magician or wizard's pin because it would take a lot of magic to solve that particular problem. She also had a few Star Trek pins and other space exploration related pins, very cool.

The next few days we hit all of the presidential monuments (pictures attached on the right), my personal favorite is FDR's, Korean War and the WW II memorial. WW II is just impressive, Korean War is understated and very well done. I like the quietness of the statues, during the winter, when there is snow, it is especially vivid.

Our final stop (prior to the Texas game :-( ) was Arlington, VA. I went there to visit a friend's sister's grave site, as well as check out JFK's grave, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Lee mansion. Lee's mansion (where Robert E. Lee grew up) was a mansion built by the Lee family, the museum there shows how the Lee and Washington families were linked. The estate was taken over by the Union Army during the Civil War and was turned into a hospital for Union Soldiers during the Civil War and as a cemetery. The grounds were then turned into a National Cemetery.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is guarded by members of the US Army's 3d Infantry Regiment. That particular day, we watched the changing of the guard ceremony, as well as a wreath laying ceremony. Very cool.