We're old hands at getting to the Smithsonian now, beetling into the Natural History Museum about 1030, ducking in from a strong sun bent on driving the temperature outside up to 91 F or so. We have the idea that we will see only the galleries and exhibits that interest us, and we know what they are and where, and time will be conserved for the National Art Gallery. This time it's 1500 before we are standing on the steps - and we stuck to the plan, as far as seeing just what interested us most: displays on minerals and gems, dinosaurs, the ice age, early mammals, meteorites and the section on plare tectonics, earthquakes and volcanoes that snuck in when we weren't looking.
There are two kinds of children in the museum; those wide-eyed and in the process of having their understanding of the universe expanded by an order of magnitude and those who are tired of all that right now and need to get outside to play. As the day goes on, the ratio of the former to the latter goes into a steep decline. We headed down the street at a very slow stroll in the heat to the National Art gallery, and found that this one closed at 1700. We expected that here too we would be forced out at closing.
It has a dome-and-pillared rotunda that owes everything to the Romans, and outclasses them with ease at the same time. I have one photo that in no way conveys the majesty of the place. The galleries are endless, and as comprehensive in covering Renaissance and Dutch masters and Impressionists as anything I have seen in my limited experience. Sorry, that is badly put. This IS my limited experience at actually seeing these art genres; what I meant is that artworks and artists I have only read about are here, in front of my eyes. This is actually a problem; there are so many brilliant works that my mind eventually overloaded, and at 1630 we were outside, ambling through a giant folk festival on the Mall. What the National Art Gallery needs is a month or more where I spend each day in one or two galleries, no more, in hours of quiet contemplation. But I can definitely say that should they run out of space to store any of the Monets, I've got some wall space at home that, you know, could use a bit of brightening up, and I'd be happy to return them anytime after I'm dead.
Jane needed to rest, and while she did, I loped over the horizon to the Washington Monument (see enclosed photo, looking like every other photo of this massive obelisk) and the World War II Memorial, and the Vietnam Memorial. The last is too hard to take; I took no photos of either.
Then back to the hotel and the reality of hotel guest laundry rooms; nothing worth further mention.