I’m in Washington, DC for work-related reasons, and since it’s my first visit to the city I extended my trip to make a short holiday out of it.
After a late start this morning (jet lag and all) I picked up empanadas at Julia’s (Jamaican; peach and guava; yum) and took the impossibly long escalator ride down into the Dupont Circle Metro stop to be whisked away to the Capitol Building.
The physical set-up for Obama’s inauguration is already underway, so part of the lawn on this side of the Capitol is fenced off although people are allowed to wander inside for photos and such. The lawn has its own Christmas tree, whose merry ornaments and colorful trimmings couldn’t distract from its awkward position within the chain-link that surrounded it. I ate my lunch across the way at the Capitol Reflection Pool, whose patronage ebbed and flowed with each bus tour. A thin layer of ice had formed on the water and few people lingered for long in the cold.
Speaking of which, I neglected to check the weather report before I left my hotel and it was much, much chillier out than I had expected it to be, so I made a beeline to my next stop at the U.S. Botanic Garden. That the garden was right next door to the reflection pool was a welcome bonus for my cold, cold hands. The Conservatory’s warm interior was lush with plants from all over the country, including its latest permanent exhibit of Hawaiian specimens. Although much of the exterior gardens were partially bare as its plants braced for the winter ahead, it was colored in pretty shades of evergreen, reds, and browns.
A quick snap of the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. I promised a coworker that I would wait to visit it with her after she arrives on Sunday, so my library veneration will have to wait.
My last sightseeing stop before shopping and dinner was the modern art collection at the National Gallery of Art. I’m taking a contemporary art class this fall and really appreciated being able to see work by the likes of Roy Lichtenstein or Frank Stella up close. But the piece that captured my heart was Leo Villareal’s LED installation in the Concourse that links the museum’s East and West buildings. Thousands of lights along the moving walkway are programmed to create ‘abstract configurations of light’; the effect was just so lovely and oddly joyous for me. The picture doesn’t do it justice:
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