Sunday, Sept 21 — We’d asked several friends which DC museums they liked best. Everyone who had been to the Spy Museum said it was their favorite. So that was the first museum on the DC itinerary. Conveniently for us, it was also the closest to our marina, located in a complex called L’enfant Plaza. The plaza was named after Pierre Charles L’enfant, the architect who designed DC.
From the Wharf, we crossed over Main Ave SW, followed a bridge over a freeway, and the museum was one of the first buildings along the raised road.
Looking back at The Wharf
For some reason, we expected the museum to be nondescript, but it was probably the most obvious of all the modern buildings.
This week has been mellow. On Saturday, we went to the Walter’s Museum. It had lots of old paintings and a few old suits of armor and a few old weapons. I learned that Samurai armor includes a mask that’s kinda creepy.
continued… The third room on the third floor of the Charles building was similar to the first two that we’d already seen: very large, spacious rooms filled with large paintings and some other types of art.
There were also exhibits in the walkway that ran along the perimeter of the courtyard below.
Saturday, September 13 — We’d planned to go to The Walters Museum and Peabody Library this afternoon. Keith was opposed to going to yet another museum, but Christi and Eric managed to talk him into going because Walters had a large collection of medieval weaponry and armory.
The museum was almost 3.5 miles away, near the Washington Memorial. We could have taken public transit, but it would have taken at least an hour and involved about a mile of walking each way to/from the transit stops. Even though it was a gorgeous day, we’d walked 8-miles yesterday and just didn’t feel like we could do another extensive day of walking. We called a ride-share, instead, and were door to door in minutes.
The museum appeared to be two separate buildings that had been fused together. They each had a very different architectural style, so it was kind of weird looking. We entered through a set of doors set in the glass panel towards the left in this photo. Per the map, we were in the Centre building. The more ornate building was the Charles building. The map indicated there was also a third building on the west side of the Charles building called the Hackerman House.
The bus belonged to a tour group of senior citizens from Georgia, and we entered with them. We were delighted to find that admission was completely free for everyone! In order to leave the group behind, we headed up the stairs and started on the 3rd floor of the Centre building, where the medieval exhibit was located. Keith was disappointed to find that the armory exhibit was small.
This week has been fun. On Saturday, we went to the marina pool.
Cette semaine était amusante. Samedi nous sommes allés à la aupiscine de marina.
On Sunday, we went to Washington DC by car just for the day. We saw a few of the monuments, and they were kind of boring. I learned that The Jefferson Monument is pretty far from the most popular monuments. We didn’t see the whole loop because dad and I were hungry and it was a long walk. After the monuments, we ate at a Shake Shack close to the marina that we’re going to stay in while we’re in DC.
