Monday, August 4, 2008

Anniversary in DC



We planned a trip to DC to celebrate our anniversary. Unfortunately, it was quite stormy on Saturday so we had to go on Sunday. Last year to celebrate our 10th we went to DC for a weekend and stayed overnight at the Hotel Rouge, which was totally awesome, but this year we decided to just do a day trip.

We had both seen articles on exhibits we wanted to check out so we planned our day based on that. We made sure to end up at Zayntinya for dinner.

Mark's choice was up first, the Jim Henson exhibit at the Smithsonian International Gallery. I was not able to take pictures but wish I did. It was so cool. We saw Kermit and Bert and Ernie, the real deal! We also saw some Fraggle Rock characters. This being a show on cable, I was not familiar with it since my parents didn't get cable until I went to college. Mark was really into it. The exhibit overall was very interesting and charted his career from the 1960's to his death. The sketches and early puppets were fun to see but the highlight was definitely the stuff we recognized. They had a good play area for kids and I asked Mark if he wanted to put faces on the monsters or play in the puppet theater but he didn't. It was a very small exhibit and we finished much earlier than planned. In fact, in that crazy underground gallery it took longer to find an exit than to see the exhibit. We ended up wandering in the Freer Gallery before seeing light and exit doors! Mark said he would hate to see what happened in an emergency.

Next we headed up to Dupont Circle to visit the Phillips Collection because I wanted to see the Jacob Lawrence exhibit. I am very interested in the Harlem Renaissance and had first read about him through that. Then I did see the traveling exhibit of the incomplete migration series at the Frist Center in Nashville and loved the connection between art and history to tell a story. I read this article about the exhibit and saw that the series would be shown complete which seemed like something I couldn't miss. It was awesome. The paintings are small but each have a caption that tell the story of the Great Migration in 60 parts. I had to keep going back to some to look at details and listen to the cell phone tour to hear the artist speak. So, I loved it but it also didn't take as long as we thought.

After checking out the rest of the Phillips we decided to wonder over to the neighborhood of the restaurant and see if there was a book store or something since we had almost 3 hours to kill. What we discovered was the Regal Gallery Place-Chinatown. 2 hours in the air conditioning with a bottle of water was perfect. We saw The Mummy, Dragon Emperor, it wasn't as bad as everyone says. I liked it better than Indiana Jones, Crystal Skulls (aliens, really? ugh.) And it had Brendan Fraser, he's on my list.

Dinner at Zayntinya was very good. Not quite as awesome as I remembered but very very tasty. Especially the eggplant and the stuffed grape leaves.

Then we drove home and got in at exactly 10:00 p.m., as we walked through the door Mark exclaimed - "Quick, turn it on, we're just in time for the Two Coreys!" I was glad to be home.