My Trip to Washington D.C., Day 3

Saturday my BFF Rosemary, who lives in Pennsylvania, down near the Delaware border, drove down to D.C. to spend the day with us. We started out at the National Portrait Gallery, and ended up getting separated from the rest of my family there. It was OK with everyone that we did so…Rosemary and I wanted to go slowly and read the blurbs about all of the Presidents, and my sister wanted to take her kids to the Air and Space Museum, which I didn’t care about. So they ended up seeing more pictures than we did, but we went more slowly at our own pace. It was interesting to us that the descriptions of Presidents mentioned the fact that they owned slaves for only 3 of them, when there were 12 Presidents who owned other people in our history.

The Presidential Portraits are amazing. The one of Obama is so lovely, with the rich colors. Some are modern, some are traditional, some are downright weird.

Looking at JFK, a father said to his son, “Kennedy was one of the greatest Presidents in our history.” The son asked, “Why?” “We’ll talk about it later. Or, actually, you can read about him. Yeah, we’ll read about him.” Such a dad (parent) response, I loved it.

Clinton was downright weird. I guess kind of like the man.

I thought Michelle Obama’s portrait was nice enough, but it was so muted compared to the vibrancy of Barak’s, and I didn’t think the artist captured her vibrant essence. To be honest, I would not really know it was her if I didn’t know it was her, if you know what I mean.

I loved this one, of the female Supreme Court Justices. We were thinking that we might catch up with my family, and we wanted lunch, so we left the Gallery with much unseen. I truly think you could spend a month or more in DC and just explore the Smithsonian museums, and really get a good feel for them. I think that would be an amazing way to spend some time. Maybe someday, but sadly, I doubt it.

For lunch, we wandered around the neighborhood and found ourselves at Clyde’s of Gallery Place, a clubby looking place that really had the feel of a D.C. establishment to me. We got there before church got out, I guess, because it was pretty empty when we arrived for brunch, but was packed by the time we left. It turns out it was fine that I didn’t have the shrimp and grits at the African American Museum, because they were on the menu here. They also had a beautiful smoked salmon scrambled egg plate. We ordered one of each and split them, along with some wine. It was a delicious lunch, and so relaxing to sit and enjoy with my BFF.

After lunch we wandered toward the Air and Space Museum, but found ourselves distracted by Ford’s Theater, where Lincoln was assassinated. I didn’t realize that it is still an active theater, and that you could, if you were so inclined, see ‘A Christmas Carol’ there this upcoming holiday season. It was interesting and sad and somewhat ghoulish to look at the spot where he was shot.

We then happened by the National Archive, and Rosemary wanted to go inside and see the Declaration of Independence, but the line was too long and it was getting late. Again, so much to see, so little time. We did wait in line for a bit, and she was depressed to see a woman of color selling Trump hats, but I told her that I thought a person had to make a living, and could not just shut down the shop when a new President came into office. She was heartened by the sight of a tourist, a middle aged man, wearing a pussy hat.

We walked from there to the far end of the Mall, back over near the Lincoln Memorial, where we stopped by to see the new Martin Luther King memorial. The pictures do not do it justice. We were chatting with a park ranger, who told us that MLK’s legs and feet are not complete, to symbolize that his work is not yet finished.

It seemed especially important to me to visit the MLK memorial, as my dad, who we were here to honor, was there for his “I have a dream” speech in 1963, which inspired him mightily, and he got more involved in the Civil Rights movement. He would have loved the memorial. My family had made it here ahead of us, and my niece and nephew said this was their favorite of the monuments/memorials.

It was getting late at this point, so we took a Lyft back to the Air BnB, got cleaned up, and went to dinner with my step mom. Then we walked over to say goodbye to my sister and her kids, since we were leaving early the next morning. We shared my bed like we did so many times in High School, stayed up whispering (so as to not awaken Julie, who is a light sleeper) until 1:30, then got up at 4:30 so Rosemary could take me to the airport for my flight before driving back to Pennsylvania.

It was a great trip. I was so moved by the honor for my dad, and I so enjoyed spending time with my family and my friend. I wish he could have been there to see it, he would have loved it all.