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Friday: Trains! Newseum, Open Road
Dec. 27th, 2019 11:00 pmToday, we were supposed to go to the Newseum, which opens an hour earlier than the stuff on the mall. Did that happen bright and early? Nope! Did R. or anyone in her family call to tell me that not only were we not going for the open, BUT they were not going to leave at the designated 8:45 am departure time. Nope! I texted tell them we were hearing out and noticed on Find My that they were not moving. And we left a bit later than planned. Hmmm! R. was taking a nap. Which, fine, but Tell Me, Please! Do not make me ask! Whatever.
We switched parking plans to Lot 96 at the Federal Plaza Metro Station building. Home of the Bible Museum. What? Whatever. .3 miles from there the Botanical, which we were early for — we arrived about 20 minutes before open so we walked right into the holiday train exhibit!!! The one we missed on previous trips. It was fun! I loved it! I took so many selfies with plant models of cool places I have never been, and with model trains blurring the photo. So. Much. Fun.! Thank you, my dear sister, for napping!
A. did the plant scavenger hunt with R.. I also got pictures of the monument models again. I love them entirely!
While I was having a blast taking excessive selfies, I started getting tons of texts from my sister’s family. Oh well! I said, tell me where you will be and when and ignored them all. When we were done, we got hot chocolate and coffee (peppermint!) at the coffee stand outside the botanical, and walked over to the Newseum. I got my group in, loitered, paid for my sister’s family (because they did not respond when I asked if they could pay, which means they did not want to fork over the $86.40 to get them in which, yes, Dear Reader, the Newseum got over $170 of my ill-gotten gains, despite the fact that I had previously been sort of pleased by the idea that the Newseum might finish its entire run without me ever visiting it one single time).
The layout is terrible. Incredible waste of space everywhere! No wonder the building cost so much. The Wolfgang Puck Food Section is pretty sad, but you know, Wolfgang Puck so not a surprise. Lots of people there, but the line moved along well, so there is that. After lunch, I hung out and did Duo. A. did a lot of interactive stuff with R. I often complain out museums reifying a bunch of cultural schema that everywhere else has figured out needs to Die, but the Newseum is remarkable for its relentless decontextualization. It really is a Gannet Eye View of the World (tm). If you walked through there, you would think the rest of the planet existed primarily during WW2 (okay, and the Berlin Wall), and you would be hard pressed to draw a line from the Stonewall exhibit to transbathroom laws. For all that Ida B. Wells gets an engraved in stone quote, there is no connection drawn between her, the civil rights movement and Black Lives Matter. It is all very strange.
Anyway. A. had enough fun that she did not complain too much walking almost a mile back to Lot 96. The drive home was kind of high traffic — dunno why. We are hanging at the hotel until dinner at Open Road and I will be monitoring that traffic to make sure we allow enough time to get there.
I think that was the last of our museum plans for this trip, unless someone gets a wild hair and proposes additional activities. We are going to try for a chill weekend, with mani peds, haircuts, Jumanji: Reverse the Curse at The Void, and R. will have lunch with a friend. I might try to get lunch at Moby Dick’s House of Kabob — I looked it up because what a name! But it actually looks sort of awesome.
Open Road was super loud. Bummer! Drinks were good, service was uneven (in part due to noise level creating communication problems), food was tough to get right, but good once it was. I wanted to get a completely plain chicken breast for A. — it took 2 tries. I only wanted the fish and chips if I could eat the cole slaw, and I wound up with the fish and chips after being told that would be fine but then no cole slaw because it had sour cream. I would have preferred the fish tacos. Altho the fried cod was really good as were the french fries! The side of rice had a lot of unexpected seasoning for the person who wanted it. The mac and cheese was spicy, but the ribs in it were really good. The whole meal was pretty much like that. If you know the menu, you can do really well, but first time could be a struggle. And then there is the really high level of sound. Oh well! Would go back in mid-afternoon for drinks, for sure. They worked really hard for us, tho, so cannot fault their efforts! The noise I think was why when I ordered a black manhattan, I got a repeat of the first drink I ordered (which I had liked, but I wanted to try two different drinks off the menu, because they had good things!). The drinks were uniformly excellent.
R. went to a Wegmans and came back with three kinds of nog. I tried the silk nog. It was pretty good with a little whisky and bitters. Would have been better with cinnamon, tho.
We switched parking plans to Lot 96 at the Federal Plaza Metro Station building. Home of the Bible Museum. What? Whatever. .3 miles from there the Botanical, which we were early for — we arrived about 20 minutes before open so we walked right into the holiday train exhibit!!! The one we missed on previous trips. It was fun! I loved it! I took so many selfies with plant models of cool places I have never been, and with model trains blurring the photo. So. Much. Fun.! Thank you, my dear sister, for napping!
A. did the plant scavenger hunt with R.. I also got pictures of the monument models again. I love them entirely!
While I was having a blast taking excessive selfies, I started getting tons of texts from my sister’s family. Oh well! I said, tell me where you will be and when and ignored them all. When we were done, we got hot chocolate and coffee (peppermint!) at the coffee stand outside the botanical, and walked over to the Newseum. I got my group in, loitered, paid for my sister’s family (because they did not respond when I asked if they could pay, which means they did not want to fork over the $86.40 to get them in which, yes, Dear Reader, the Newseum got over $170 of my ill-gotten gains, despite the fact that I had previously been sort of pleased by the idea that the Newseum might finish its entire run without me ever visiting it one single time).
The layout is terrible. Incredible waste of space everywhere! No wonder the building cost so much. The Wolfgang Puck Food Section is pretty sad, but you know, Wolfgang Puck so not a surprise. Lots of people there, but the line moved along well, so there is that. After lunch, I hung out and did Duo. A. did a lot of interactive stuff with R. I often complain out museums reifying a bunch of cultural schema that everywhere else has figured out needs to Die, but the Newseum is remarkable for its relentless decontextualization. It really is a Gannet Eye View of the World (tm). If you walked through there, you would think the rest of the planet existed primarily during WW2 (okay, and the Berlin Wall), and you would be hard pressed to draw a line from the Stonewall exhibit to transbathroom laws. For all that Ida B. Wells gets an engraved in stone quote, there is no connection drawn between her, the civil rights movement and Black Lives Matter. It is all very strange.
Anyway. A. had enough fun that she did not complain too much walking almost a mile back to Lot 96. The drive home was kind of high traffic — dunno why. We are hanging at the hotel until dinner at Open Road and I will be monitoring that traffic to make sure we allow enough time to get there.
I think that was the last of our museum plans for this trip, unless someone gets a wild hair and proposes additional activities. We are going to try for a chill weekend, with mani peds, haircuts, Jumanji: Reverse the Curse at The Void, and R. will have lunch with a friend. I might try to get lunch at Moby Dick’s House of Kabob — I looked it up because what a name! But it actually looks sort of awesome.
Open Road was super loud. Bummer! Drinks were good, service was uneven (in part due to noise level creating communication problems), food was tough to get right, but good once it was. I wanted to get a completely plain chicken breast for A. — it took 2 tries. I only wanted the fish and chips if I could eat the cole slaw, and I wound up with the fish and chips after being told that would be fine but then no cole slaw because it had sour cream. I would have preferred the fish tacos. Altho the fried cod was really good as were the french fries! The side of rice had a lot of unexpected seasoning for the person who wanted it. The mac and cheese was spicy, but the ribs in it were really good. The whole meal was pretty much like that. If you know the menu, you can do really well, but first time could be a struggle. And then there is the really high level of sound. Oh well! Would go back in mid-afternoon for drinks, for sure. They worked really hard for us, tho, so cannot fault their efforts! The noise I think was why when I ordered a black manhattan, I got a repeat of the first drink I ordered (which I had liked, but I wanted to try two different drinks off the menu, because they had good things!). The drinks were uniformly excellent.
R. went to a Wegmans and came back with three kinds of nog. I tried the silk nog. It was pretty good with a little whisky and bitters. Would have been better with cinnamon, tho.