Day 28 - Washington DC

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Today was wet and supposed to be 12 degrees, although it didn’t feel that cold at all.

Debbie took a train to Alexandria, Virginia, which is a historic town that was the original port for Washington DC and has 4200 buildings on the national register.

I took a taxi to the Freer Gallery and started a museum crawl along Independence Avenue. The Freer Gallery has American, Asian and Islamic art displays.

From this I went into the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, which is an adjunct to the Freer.

I walked past the Smithsonian Castle and then into the Hirshhorn Museum, which is also called the doughnut for its construction shape. On street level in the middle (the hole), it has a fountain with statues around it and artwork in the garden around it. It houses pieces of modern art, many of which can only be described as “interesting”. They range from strategically arranged piles of concrete reinforcing steel or plastic crabs, to bowls of pearls, mobiles, photos, video images and other arrangements. There are not many museums where an Andy Warhol painting is the most “normal” thing there.

After this, I walked further down Independence Avenue and went into the Air and Space Museum. It was really crowded and has lots of interactive displays so it is really popular with families and children. As I am not so interested in Air or Space topics, I had a quick walk through and then headed on down to the American Indian Museum. At least it answered the question everyone has of how astronauts go to the toilet when in space.

The American Indian Museum was sparsely set up and seemed to focus on American Indians from a modern perspective, so I was glad I had been to the American Museum of Natural History in New York as it had a terrific collection, by comparison.

Next, I walked to the Crime Museum on 7^th Street between E and F streets - http://www.crimemuseum.org. This had a really interesting collection of stories and objects, both from the past and a floor on CSI techniques. It had loads of information about famous criminals like Bonnie and Clyde, gangsters, gangs from the wild west and modern criminals.

Finally I went to the National Portrait Gallery and walked until my legs could stand no longer and I got a taxi back to the hotel. This gallery had a lot of historical portraits of famous Americans, some landscapes and some modern paintings. They also had a current exhibit on US Presidents which was interesting.

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