Earlier this morning I set out at 8:30 to check out the newly- (and finally-) finished visitor’s center at the Capitol and to see the Lincoln exhibit at the newly-reopened National Museum of American History. I guess it was one of those DC/History kind of days. 

Walking down to Lincoln Park I got in touch with my friend Eddy C, also recently unemployed, to see if he’d like to accompany me and hang out for the day. He said he’d love to so I walked over to his house and we were on our way. But not before a stop at Jacob’s, a local coffee shop for caffeine—I’d already had almost an entire pot of coffee, being up since 3:00am—and a little breakfast to get us on our way.

The $600 million+ Capitol Visitor’s Center is atrocious. And that’s only from the outside. There’s nothing to see from the outside since it’s all buried underground in an effort to not allow citizens any proximity to the actual Capitol itself. Fears of truck bombs, concealed gun anthrax and the like have far removed the actual building itself from the physical grasp of the taxpayer. What you can see at ground level is a huge, unshaded concrete plaza (wouldn’t want to be there in August) and massive ramps and stairs that lead you underground to the entrance. Removed from the Capitol grounds are the 150-year-old oak trees that once provided shading. Here are before & after pictures.

The entry line was way too long, full of turrists, so we opted out. Maybe next time. Maybe not.

Eddy wanted to visit the Botanical Gardens so that was our next stop. I’d been there a couple of times but not within the last few years. As usual, it’s beautiful and fragrant inside and the colors were amazing. A majority of the orchid collection (a BG must-see) had been moved into the Garden Court and of course daffodils were tucked into just about every nook and cranny. The tropical rainforest was a little too humid for our heavy coats but it’s still fun to explore.

Next we visited the Hirschhorn to see what their new exhibits were. While not a big fan of literal sculpture (which the Hirschhorn has a lot of—I prefer mine more abstract) I was more impressed by the two video exhibits they had, one a frenetic light show on 70 monitors and another a 30-minute film which we watched. The film demonstrated a progression of liquids, gases and solids as they interacted with cause & effect, moving the action further down, and sometimes up, the line. Very fun.

Then it was lunchtime. I had two coupons for free salads or sandwiches at Potbelly so all we had to pay for was our drinks and a pickle. It was getting to be almost Ellen & Oprah time so we hopped the D6 back over to CHill to watch. We also decided it was time for an unemployment cocktail so we had a little gin+gin[ger] while we watched our afternoon talk shows. Such a civilized day!