Well, today was our final day in DC. It's been an exhausting trip, and yet in some ways it doesn't feel like we did a lot. I'm pretty sure that's an illusion though. Today we ate breakfast at Dunkin Donuts, and then it was on to see some cherry blossoms (sadly past their peak). Right before that, however, I made WK pose for an awesome photo:
Blossoms and the sky:
Then we wandered around the WWII memorial a bit...
MC posing like a boss:
They were doing some work on one end of the memorial, which to me detracted a bit from its power. Oh well. After that it was on to the Lincoln memorial. While on the way there, I saw a kid being attacked by ducks. It made me laugh. Only after getting over there did I discover just why the ducks were attacking.
Ducklings!
Just the momma and daddy ducks being protective. And yes, I know that's a goose in the background, but the wee ones were definitely ducklings - they followed the momma duck up onto the pathway at one point. In fact... the goose at one point tried to eat a duckling!
More Lincoln photos later once I can edit them a little. A teaser:
WK and MC assiduously planning our next steps:
We ended up going to the
Freer-Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian. They have a lot of cool Asian art and artifacts. I didn't think this was the case initially, but it turns out they have a bunch of floors below the ground floor. We only managed to get through a couple before we got museum-ed out...
Some cool art stuff:
Japanese demon mask:
However, this was pretty much the best thing I saw all day:
And then on to lunchtime! Today was food truck day. MC and I had some wicked tasty gyros from the
Tasty Kabob food truck. They had a good portion of lamb inside the gyro, and it had a great flavor. I'd recommend checking them out if you're wandering around DC.
Full of kabobs, our next stop was the
Air and Space Museum on the Mall. Our goal was not to see the museum, but to check out the planetarium, since none of us had been in ages. We saw the
Journey to the Stars program. I was pretty disappointed overall - Whoopi was unimpressive as a narrator, and they did things like put forth dark matter as a scientific fact rather than hypothesis. Oh well, it was under $10 and we didn't have to walk far :)
I did take a couple of photos while there, however. This is hanging right outside the planetarium:
And this is the freaking enormous
downstairs portion of the gift shop:
Yeah... two level gift shop. Insanity.
I parted ways with WK and MC and set out to go see the Constitution and Declaration of Independence at the
National Archives. On the way there, I saw something shiny, and ended up at one of the exhibitions at the National Gallery instead.
Faking It was an inspiring collection of photographs from the era before digital manipulation. It showcased different techniques photographers used back in the day for manipulating and compositing photos. Some were pretty common, like double exposures, but there were also examples of hand-colored photos, as well as some political propaganda and popular art. Very cool stuff. No photos allowed though.
Quite a few people highly recommended checking out the Ethiopian food in the DC area, and I'm glad we listened to them. We ended up at
Harar Mesob for dinner. As an appetizer, I had the Sambussa - basically like a deep-fried phylo dough with tasty ground beef and spices inside.
My main course was Awaze Yebeg Tibs - marinated lamb with awaze sauce, onions, garlic, rosemary, and jalapenos, along with sides of potatoes and tomatoes. Everything is served with
inerja - a weird, spongy flatbread. It took me awhile to get used to the texture, and I still found it odd by the end of the meal. Not bad, just different. You can see the inerja between my plate and the rest of the food:
WK got the vegetarian sampler:
and he CRUSHED IT:
I didn't do too poorly either:
(Wasn't able to finish my inerja though :()
And now, it's time to find some sleep, we're heading back to Knoxville pretty early tomorrow.
