Staycation: Day Three

In which Jenn and Jake actually get to go to the Botanical Garden and traipse around the Mall in the rain.

What a full day of sightseeing on Wednesday! The great thing about staycating in mid-August is that the town isn't as full as it might be otherwise; families are getting ready for back-to-school, so vacations have pretty well ended; most camps are out of session, so there are fewer field trips; and the locals are still out of town. All of this led to many fewer tourists than I had originally anticipated, which was awesome.

After the jump: the Botanical Gardens, Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Museum of American History, and the Freer/Sackler Galleries (links and pictures included). All within a few compact blocks on the Mall!

After Tuesdays "oh, no, wait, the Gardens are closed" snafu, we headed out early Wednesday morning, to make sure we got a jump on things. So glad we did! The Botanic Garden was an absolute highlight of the Staycation, and we spent hours there, wandering through the plants. I especially loved looking at the plants that yield our foods, herbs, and spices (the coffee and cacao trees were really interesting, as was the banana tree, at right).

You can't beat the sheer beauty of the rows and rows of flowers. The variety of nature is absolutely breathtaking. I loved that the displays were set up as if the flowers were naturally occurring, not like they had been artificially cultivated (which, of course, they have).

As a low-maintenance plant girl, I couldn't get enough of the desert display with the cacti and succulents. And the jungle display was amazing, especially once we got up on the overhead walkway. Seriously, y'all, I took, like, seventy pictures. It was amazing. I recommend it.

After we left the Botanic Garden, we took a quick walk across to the Museum of the American Indian for lunch. I'd heard that the food court was great, and so it was. Yes, one could certainly eat like it was Thanksgiving year-round, but we opted to eat different regional foods. I ate from the South American section, with yam-and-banana soup, cornbread, and fried yucca with garlic-chipotle sauce. I don't remember exactly what Jake had, but his Plains Indians fry bread was fab.

We walked around one of the displays for a little while, and then headed over to the Museum of American History, one of the few stops on our Staycation (along with the National Gallery) that I'd been to before. I'd never been there with Jake, though, and there were a few things I definitely needed to see with him...and first on the list was Julia Child's kitchen! He hadn't seen it before; I had, but not in years. It was even more interesting since learning as much about Julia as I have in the last couple of years.

Other must-see stops were the First Ladies' dresses and the pop-culture displays--how could one not go see Archie Bunker's chair and the ruby slippers?--but an absolute show-stopper was the exhibit about the Apollo Theatre. We learned about the history of the Apollo, alongside artifacts like the producers' notes on performers, Aretha's dress, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson's hair cream, and Afrika Bambaataa's robe.

After THAT, we made our way over to the Freer & Sackler Galleries to look at some Asian art. I've always wanted to go to the Freer/Sackler, but had never made my way down. I'm so glad we did on this trip. I don't know a whole lot about Asian art, and these galleries feature art from all over Asia, from the temporary Gods of Angkor exhibit to Chinese and Japanese paintings to Korean pottery to Turkish mosaic. I feel like we only got a taste of what the world of Asian art has to offer, but what a taste. We were immersed in beauty.

Coming up next: Thursday's day trip to Mount Vernon, and a shrine to Theodore Roosevelt.