The American Indian Museum & the Arboretum
Up next to the Capitol, the first two museums in the Smithsonian, are the Botanical Gardens and the American Indian Museum.
We arrived at Union Station via the Metro. We wandered around and then ended up down in the food court. Had a decent hamburger and onion rings at Johnny Rockets. While we were eating, at least 30 Chinese male students in matching blazers, and a smaller contingent of young women came into the food court area (which is huge, BTW) and started looking for food. It was kind of amazing just to see so many people dressed alike.
We tried the Gelato. Not recommended.
We walked over to the Capitol and checked out where the line would start for the Rosa Parks memorial. There were already some people holding the first positions in line -- maybe 100, or so. It was around 1:30pm.
We went into the Botanical Gardens. It was very interesting. There was an art display with picture frames around video screens. These showed videos of stop-action photography of plants growing. Then there was a room with scents of various spices that you could bend over and whiff. I didn't sneeze once! There were desert and jungle regions, as well as a "forest primeval" which had only the earliest plants -- pre-seed and flowers. It was also nice to get warm in the jungle zone. Here, a huge variety of incredible flowers and plants were arrayed along a creek, and you could go up onto the catwalk and see it all from above.
The American Indian Museum was beautiful. The waterfall and river wandered along the sides and the shape was reminiscent of the cliff dwellings. The food in the cafe was awesome. A variety of foods from different regions are available in a cafeteria environment. I had some spicy buffalo chile and a Mexican brownie... Laura had a watermelon-tomato salad and dried mangos. We also had some very nice mint tea. Unfortunately we got there about 3:30, so the selection was greatly diminished. They shut down about half the restaurant at 3pm. Still, it got us through the long period in line to see Rosa in the Rotunda.
The displays in the museum were of mixed quality, I thought. Some beautiful kayaks in the main area of the first floor were great, the movie got us off our feet in comfortable seats for quite awhile. It was very interesting... not the usual documentary fare. It covered the lives of native Americans struggling to integrate modern life with their traditional lives. The movie -- in fact the whole museum -- was not limited to the natives of the Continental U.S. but extended to Central and South America. There were some great clothing and weapon displays... but the items themselves were grouped together fairly tightly with no explanations of the stories behind them. The interactive displays were pretty, but didn't have great UI, and didn't seem to go into depth (or maybe I was missing something). The art display on the second floor was really great -- it was only about two artists so it was very in-depth.
The top floor was the most educational, but the most frustrating. There were bottlenecks in the flow of people, and the plexiglass covering the displays was highly reflective and curved in a way that was very distracting to me. I didn't find anything on California Indians, but the way the displays were arranged I could have missed it.
We arrived at Union Station via the Metro. We wandered around and then ended up down in the food court. Had a decent hamburger and onion rings at Johnny Rockets. While we were eating, at least 30 Chinese male students in matching blazers, and a smaller contingent of young women came into the food court area (which is huge, BTW) and started looking for food. It was kind of amazing just to see so many people dressed alike.
We tried the Gelato. Not recommended.
We walked over to the Capitol and checked out where the line would start for the Rosa Parks memorial. There were already some people holding the first positions in line -- maybe 100, or so. It was around 1:30pm.
We went into the Botanical Gardens. It was very interesting. There was an art display with picture frames around video screens. These showed videos of stop-action photography of plants growing. Then there was a room with scents of various spices that you could bend over and whiff. I didn't sneeze once! There were desert and jungle regions, as well as a "forest primeval" which had only the earliest plants -- pre-seed and flowers. It was also nice to get warm in the jungle zone. Here, a huge variety of incredible flowers and plants were arrayed along a creek, and you could go up onto the catwalk and see it all from above.
The American Indian Museum was beautiful. The waterfall and river wandered along the sides and the shape was reminiscent of the cliff dwellings. The food in the cafe was awesome. A variety of foods from different regions are available in a cafeteria environment. I had some spicy buffalo chile and a Mexican brownie... Laura had a watermelon-tomato salad and dried mangos. We also had some very nice mint tea. Unfortunately we got there about 3:30, so the selection was greatly diminished. They shut down about half the restaurant at 3pm. Still, it got us through the long period in line to see Rosa in the Rotunda.
The displays in the museum were of mixed quality, I thought. Some beautiful kayaks in the main area of the first floor were great, the movie got us off our feet in comfortable seats for quite awhile. It was very interesting... not the usual documentary fare. It covered the lives of native Americans struggling to integrate modern life with their traditional lives. The movie -- in fact the whole museum -- was not limited to the natives of the Continental U.S. but extended to Central and South America. There were some great clothing and weapon displays... but the items themselves were grouped together fairly tightly with no explanations of the stories behind them. The interactive displays were pretty, but didn't have great UI, and didn't seem to go into depth (or maybe I was missing something). The art display on the second floor was really great -- it was only about two artists so it was very in-depth.
The top floor was the most educational, but the most frustrating. There were bottlenecks in the flow of people, and the plexiglass covering the displays was highly reflective and curved in a way that was very distracting to me. I didn't find anything on California Indians, but the way the displays were arranged I could have missed it.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home