Malachite, Congo

Freaky Friday, the first day of spring, with a snowstorm and a solar eclipse too, all in one day. We wouldn’t have seen the eclipse anyway; it was way out over the Atlantic. We couldn’t even see the sun. It was a very wet day. We took the hotel shuttle to get to the Metro and stay out of the oobleck, which is not a ‘problem’, no matter that the spell checker thinks I meant that by oobleck. Breakfast was in the Crystal City underground mall again. This time we ate at Au Bon Pain. A good pain that is what I was feeling when I got up this morning after yesterday’s exercise. Today is definitely going to be a museum day. The weather can’t decide whether to snow or rain, it seems to be doing a lot of both.

We started with the Natural History museum and then closed our museum day with a return to the National Gallery. In between these two museums is the Pavilion Cafe, it is in the Sculpture Garden, where we had lunch. This was the best museum food that we have had and the mulled wine was great! Overheard in the Human Evolution exhibit, “What I don’t like is the way they present it as if it was gospel. It’s just a theory isn’t it?” “Crocodilians, Crocodilians, One is short, one is tall, Crocodilians, Crocodilians“, sung by a four-year-old girl in the Bones exhibit. What Anne said to me, after I told her about all the great pictures that I had taken in the Minerals and Gems exhibit, “That was very gneiss of you. I won’t take you for granite. Shale we go now?”

We had supper at a Crystal City roadhouse that’s an oxymoron by the way; it was time for a show. How about some silent Shakespeare? “Much Ado about Nothing” was being performed as an unspoken dance concert. Sort of like an instrumental version of your favorite songs. If that’s not enough, the story was transported from period Spain to Las Vegas and the fifties. Still it worked and was a lot of fun. It was performed by SYNETIC Theater, one part Synthesis and the other Kinetic.