Sunday, March 17, 2019

Our day started with visiting a local congregation which is always a pleasure. You never know who you’re going to meet and who knows who. “It’s not a small world, it’s just a big family” as one person put it to me once. We did actually end up seeing a couple who worshiped with us at Southport for a little while who was in town visiting their son. Also, the man who preached that morning is the father of a good friend back home. Small world. Big family.

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After services it was off to Popeye’s for Sunday lunch which has become somewhat of a family tradition back home. After lunch it was back to the house to change clothes and off to the DC area! Our plan for the day was to hit some of the Smithsonian museums.

Driving into DC on Sunday wasn’t that bad. Traffic picked up a bit coming into the city but it was fairly light. Once we got into the city finding a parking spot was a bit of a challenge. Our Airbnb hostess told us that parking was free everywhere on Sunday and it showed! We found a spot on the corner of 14th and Independence that was questionable but we didn’t end up getting a ticket. So all good.

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We first took a short walk to the Smithsonian “Castle” which ended up just being a Visitor Center for the most part. But the it was a beautiful building and the cherry blossoms were starting to bloom and the garden on the south side was beautiful.

From The Castle we went to the National Mall. From that spot you can see the Capitol Building at one end and the Washington Monument at the other.

Across The Mall was the Museum of Natural History. There was a short line at the entrance and it moved quickly. The museum highlighted the history of all living things in The U.S. Vivian was most impressed by all of the bones.

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From there we visited the National Museum of American History, just a short walk to the west. This museum focused mostly on how life evolved for people living in the United States over the years. There was a lot to see here and because of time we didn’t get to see as much as we would have liked (it closed at 5:30 on Sundays). The most impressive display to was was to see the actual flag which inspired the writing of The Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key.

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After leaving the museum we weren’t quite ready to go back so we headed toward the Washington Monument to see what we could see. Turns out that the monument is currently closed with a vague reopening date of “Spring 2019” so we probably won’t be able to make it up into the monument like we’d hoped. Still a very impressive monument to see.

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Walking around the Washington Monument we came to the World War II Monument memorializing the sacrifices made and the people who fought.

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Since we were so close to the Lincoln Monument we had to take a quick peek. We walked the south side of The Reflection Pool to the memorial. Vivian, Zach and I sat at the pool looking at the ducks for a bit while Sonya, Eli, Savannah, and Seth walked up to the monument. Sonya was very impressed by how big it was. It truly is an impressive monument. We then swapped. Zach, Vivian and I walked up while the rest walked down. We’ll be back to see it more closely later.

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It was starting to get dark so we headed back toward the van. Savannah somehow got the inspiration to go to Denny’s for breakfast-dinner so we headed back toward the house and found a Denny’s nearby. A nice cap to the day.

When we got back to the house there was a strange odor that didn’t seem to want to quit. We’ve owned an old house so a strange odor usually doesn’t mean something good. I contacted our hostess and told her about it. She quickly responded and told me that it had to be the artichokes that she had made (several hours) earlier. Crisis averted. Unless the crisis is a very foul odor in the house. Then, crisis not averted.