This past weekend my good friend from college took the Chinatown bus down from Philly to visit me. Her timing was perfect, as I was still dealing with the highs and lows of being back from the Bahamas and was in desperate need of another girls weekend (Side note, a recent study--read the blurb it is pretty cool--said that the antipation and planning of a vacation is actually what is relaxing, and not the vacation itself. Does this mean I should take vacation days every month so that I can ALWAYS anticipate???) In the span of about a day, and honestly probably just 3 hours total, we visited 3 museums. As it was rainy and cold, and we were both tired, this museum free for all was the only thing we could possibly think of doing, and lucky for us...in DC, they are free. It was if our attention span was about as good as Ten Second Tom's memory and we just had to see it all as quick as possible. In all honesty, this is the way I like to do Disney World, and often pride myself on how many rides/parks I can get to in one day courtesy of the fast pass. Side note, I reference Disney a lot, but I am from Florida and it is all I know...so...deal.
Our blitz-ADD tour of DC included the following stops and experiences:
1. The National Gallery of Art: Ever since I took AP Art history in high school, going to art museums has become a slideshow of who painted it, what period it is from, and is it well known enough for my slide memorization roll-a-dex to remember it. Even though I love art, this makes going to museums a little annoying and I often wish the hours of cramming and memorizing would just get out of my head. Like the true line skipper, when we arrived I immediately asked the museum docent (is that what the lady at the information desk is called?) what she would see if she only had an hour. OK, so we definitely were not time limited, but strolling un-goal directed and not knowing what was a MUST see...seemed like a huge waste of time. Unfortunately, unlike in Europe, the map of the museum was not a map of the famous art work (maybe something about us being democratic??), and I had no idea what was even in this monstrosity. Luckily she obliged my annoying request. Somewhere between admiring the Mary Cassats, Vermeers, and Monets, we wound up sitting down and staring at the most bizzare painting of dead animals (mostly birds) and a scared dog and pondering what actually happened to the animals(poison? murder? they are playing dead?). My friend claimed that she liked this aspect of art best, trying to guess what the artist was thinking, but for me, I have grown to like the art museums themselves (as they are their own masterpieces). In this museum you constantly stumble on an indoor garden, a fountain, or a seating area. It is just...peaceful. Perhaps one day I will move into an art museum..or maybe just an elegantly designed Feng Shui house.
2. The Museum of Natural History: Following our slideshow tour of the National Gallery, we wanted to go see some bones and gems....and apparently so did EVERYONE else. This museum was CROWDED, like I got claustrophic from all of the people, and we had to keep squeezing by strollers and high school tour groups to get where we wanted to go. Luckily, we really only had one goal, and anything else we saw was just icing on the cake....see the gems and rocks. Now I was not really a rock collector as a kid (my sister and oldest brother were and I hear she made bank selling his rock collection), but rocks and gems are so fantastically pretty to look at and even more amazing to imagine owning, preferably on a ring or a necklace.
Besides being awesomely rainbow colored amazingness, some rocks even GLOW in the Dark....like permanent glow sticks.
In between my dreams of owning gems, I spent some time playing with little kids who were imagining that snakes were in the rocks and taking advantage of the many "PLEASE touch" sections (hopefully their parents did not get creeped out by me, or think I was a pedifile, but I can't help but goof off with kids. Little kids are just so fun when they are not crying, ruining a travel experience....or yours...). 
Then, we journeyed into the Ice Ace. As is always the case with me, multiple random thoughts came into my head during this trip back in time. First of all, dinosaurs were huge mama jamas. Even the nice ones (at least the ones that are always nice in the movies) are pretty intimidating. Seriously, this is only a HEAD.
Then, I wondered why the T-Rex was so bad ass and scary, but evolved to have little useless arms (like they are pretty much unstoppable amazing predators that were naturally selected to have crazy, fake toy arms). I have to admit that their arms are pretty hilarious though. I also was confused how these awe inspiring beasts could die from a meteor and us wimpy humans who just have "brains" survived.
Finally, I realized that I do not know much about dinosaurs. As is typical with me and movie/TV references, the minute I saw them I began recalling my childhood experiences with the Land Before Time (seriously how awesome was Ducky...YEP YEP YEP). When I forgot the name of all the characters, I googled them, only to find out that I had no clue about any of the types of dinos that they were (wasn't that sort of the point of the movies? OOOOPS.). But I mean seriously, WTF is a Saurolophus?! I get that dinos are nerdy and scientific, but couldn't we name them something easier like...Cat?.
Before leaving the museum, we also made a brief pit stop in the marine life section. While I was pissed that most of the animals were just fake replicas, I was impressed that we found a REAL giant squid...preserved in formaldehyde. This thing was huge, crazy, creepy, and actually pretty awesome (Memories of middle school squid dissection flooded into my brain, and I wondered just how big this animal's ink sack was and who/how many people we could stain by popping it). If I saw one in the ocean, however, it would be much worse than the time I "swear" I saw a barracuda in the Great Barrier Reef and refused to swim in the ocean for the rest of the trip. These things are FREAKY.
3. The National Portrait Gallery: When our Sunday morning plans got cancelled, we decided to make a run through one more museum. This time we had literally 35 minutes and were pretty much sprinting up and down the 3 flights of stairs to see everything the handout with the "top 10 things to see" told us to see (this was a nice brochure and a step up on the easy scale from the classy ones at the National Gallery). Also, while it is cool that there is a museum of portraits, it does sort of get...old.
See George (do you think he was a stud during his time?)
See Old, Classic Movie Stars (this is Grace Kelly). These were my favorite...obviously.
See Ben. (Repping Dear old Pennsylvan-I-A...duh).
See Elvis (there was an Elvis exhibit...which was really just one room...and that was cool. I think if I was young when Elvis was around I would have loved him--not the way Uncle Jesse did-- but still. It is also pretty cool that Graceland is the second most visited house, next to the White House. HUGE. deal.)
I was also constantly amused by the signs telling me that different pieces in the museum inspired scenes from the second Night in the Museum movie. I then wondered if there is a tour of all the museums just to see these things...or if I should make one. Was this movie even popular...or good??? (I guess I should Netflix it now)
My favorite piece from the Portrait Gallery, and actually the entire day, was a modern art piece....surprising for me since I tend to prefer impressionism and Dutch artists. Seen below this piece was a map of the US with different TVs featuring the news, sports, and classic movies (like Wizard of Oz) on repeat (probably an expensive work of art..but the power is in the size).
No comments:
Post a Comment