A 130 mile drive for a $20 lunch

Today I took my final vacation day of 2007 and spent the majority of it cruising around the Mall at our nation's capital. I took a lot of photos, but I'm still on the film standard, so the pics will have to wait until tomorrow at least.

Usually, I take Amtrak, but that option is getting expensive, so I did the drive today. It's 130 miles straight down Interstate 95 to the New Carrollton METRO stop, then a 20-minute train ride into the city.

The first stop (as usual) was the East Building of the National Gallery. I love that place. It's good for my tortured soul. They have some new exhibits since the last time I was there, including a fine exhibition of Edward Hopper, who you may not know, but I'm sure you have seen Nighthawks.

The gallery is free, but lunch is far from it. For the record, that turkey sandwich was on pumpernickel bread, so it is kind of special. If you go by weight, the Tiramisu is more expensive than silver and the water is more expensive than gasoline. On the bright side, I got $2.01 change.

Then, with a full belly and empty pockets I was off to the Air and Space Museum, which at first glance appears to be an entire building dedicated to nothing, but it's really about airplanes and spaceflight, but they call it air and space for short.

My favorite of all the joints on the Mall is the Hirshorn Museum, which features work by modern artists and artists that are actually alive. There is always something interesting going on, and today was no exception.

There is a great exhibition of Morris Lewis' works (OK, he's dead) and a cool film by David Weiss called The Way Things Go. I posted the YouTube version at the bottom, but the full-length version is a half hour. I think Netflix has it.

The place was eerily empty. One of the guards told me that it's like that on weekdays before the holidays. I've been there on plenty of weekdays and it was much more quiet than usual, so I guess I picked a good day for a visit. There were some schoolkids at the East Building and the Air & Space, but they were in little tour groups being lectured. I couldn't tell if they were there because they wanted to be there or because they had to be there. Either way, it was nice to see grammar school-aged kids at a major art gallery, and I suppose they enjoyed it once they got off the phone.

The drive to and fro was a circus. I-95 is a mish-mash of jackasses, truck drivers and speeders that makes white-knuckle driving look like a test ride. Traffic was bad coming home, but that didn't stop the weavers from crossing 4 lanes of traffic in front of tractor-trailers so that they could tailgate the guy in the left lane. What did they think all of those red brake lights were?

I think I'm going back to Amtrak.