Washington, D.C.- Day 2 August 23, 2016

I love National Parks. I am willing to go out of my way to visit these national treasures. Just look at the next to last day of my Kansas trip to see how far I am willing to travel to these. Our National Mall is pretty much a national park, but I've been to the attractions there. I was reading something or other about the National Park Service celebrating its 100th birthday the day we were leaving D.C. and I saw the name of a national park in D.C. that I'd never heard of before. It didn't take much to convince my younger daughter that we should venture out there, since we could use the Metro. My older daughter had done volunteer work there with her university, when she first went to college in D.C., and wasn't interested in taking the time to go out there. So, we decided that would be our first destination for this day, while she worked.
I was up before 8 to do all my stretches and my daughter slept through it. She got up about 8:30 and we got ourselves together to go down to breakfast. I was picking up one of the last not great looking bananas, when the kitchen lady came out and offered me my choice of some beautiful new ones. I had scrambled eggs, while my daughter made herself a waffle. We headed back upstairs to get packed up for the day. It was going to be another very warm day, so water was a must, as well as sunscreen and hats.
We finally left the hotel at 10:10, which meant we missed rush hour and the higher Metro fares. We were on the Red Line train to L'Enfant at 10:20 and arrived there just 2 minutes later. At 10:25, we got on the Orange Line. This ride would take us out to the edge of the city and a lot of the ride was above ground. There were not many people on the train, which was not surprising. We got off at the Deanwood station at 10:42, with a cost of $2.35.
I'd copied down directions from the park's website, which we'd confirmed on my iPad before leaving the hotel. We went down into the station, as the tracks were above ground, and exited through a tunnel. Our path led us through a neighborhood, many of whose houses had bars on the windows, especially those near the main road, which I found disconcerting. The very busy, multi-lane Kenilworth Avenue crossed our path, but there was a pedestrian bridge over it. Luckily, there was a ramp to the bridge. Even at that time of day, much traffic raced beneath our feet.
On the other side of the bridge, we walked through a neighborhood with quite a mixture of architectural styles. There was an obvious old, low-income apartment complex, as well as older single-family homes. We had quite the conversation about these homes, especially since they were unlike those we find in Florida developments. We even walked by a very large brick church. It's been a long time since I walked through a city area, especially a neighborhood, and I found myself feeling rather wary. My daughter, on the other hand, seemed quite relaxed and comfortable, and I did not tell her of my feelings.
At the end of the street, there was a cross street and on the other side of that our destination-Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, the only aquatic park in the National Park system. We turned right and at 11 am, we walked through the parking lot to the entrance. There is no fee for this park and it even has a playground and athletic fields.

 As we walked through the park on the other side of the parking lot on our way to the visitor's center, I saw these red flowers, which my father had grown at our house back in the day.

 This is one of the garden buildings that we walked past and it was built in 1913 and is still used to propagate water lilies.

I was happy to find fairly decent restroom facilities and a water fountain next to the visitor's center. We took some time to walk through the exhibits in this smaller-than-normal visitor's center, saving its tiny shop for after walking the grounds. The exhibits consisted mostly of signs of explanations and history of the park, but also had pictures of the original owners of the land and some items associated with them.

According to the map my daughter picked up, there were ponds right by the visitor's center. We went around the side and couldn't find them there, but, she saw that they were behind the building. There were even some fish and minnows in them. She tried to no avail to get a picture of the fish that was interested in the hose pouring water into the pond. Some of the flowers had labels, some did not. It was nice to be able to get so close to them and to get some nice pictures.

 We never did figure out what was up with these giant pads.

 What a color!

Behind the ponds were some picnic benches under the trees. Nice spot for that.
We then went back around the front and to the left to follow the map through the park. My daughter decided we'd stay on the outside trail, rather than going down all the cut-throughs. I was never totally sure where we were on the map, because the trails didn't seem to exactly match it and there were no signs, except to the marsh. However, this was not a problem, because the place is not big enough to get lost in.
We first went along the edge of a large clearing under whose trees were placed picnic tables, which seemed terribly practical. You could have quite a large group out there.
Based on what we learned from the signs above, the first pond we came to was full of lotus flowers. So many plants! They were huge! I had my daughter stand next to them for reference-they were almost as tall as her.

 The leaves were bigger than an adult head, and the seed pods did indeed look like shower heads.

 This one that is about to bloom has such intense color.

When we came to the path to the marsh, we decided to at least go out and look at it. There was a very pleasant boardwalk through the trees with some of the wonderful, typical national park signage. We did not follow the entire path, but walked far enough to get the sense of it. It was just too hot to go all that way.

We went back to the main park and took pictures of flowers and each other. So many lovely flowers on a lovely day, with not a cloud in the sky! It was really hard to limit how many I put in this blog. The colors of the water lilies were stunning and surprising. I never knew they came in more than white.

It was nice to see some other people enjoying the park. We saw someone pushing a wheelchair toward the path around the ponds and couldn't imagine how that would work. Some folks seemed local, others did not. There was an Asian-American mother with her two daughters, but they were the only kids we saw.
It did not take terribly long to walk around the ponds. Back in the Visitor's Center, we found some postcards and pins. The place is so small, that the counter is really a dutch door with the top half open. After one more pit stop, we headed back to the Metro station at 12:24.
We walked on the other side of the street this time, to stay in the shade as long as possible. We arrived back at the station at 12:47. There was an announcement that the trains were running on just one track due to a track problem just outside Minnesota Avenue, which was the next station on our trip back to town. We found a bench to sit and just observe the area.
At 1:03, we were on a train, which really wasn't too long a wait, all things considered. We did pass the track work on our way back to town. We got off at L'Enfant at 1:23 and were on the Red Line at 1:26. In just 3 minutes, we were at Gallery Place. Here we got on the Red Line at 1:31 and got off at Judiciary Square just 2 minutes later and paid $2.35 again.
When we got to the top of the escalator, which we unfortunately had to climb, since it was not working, we found ourselves right across the street from the National Building Museum. I'd seen on Google Maps, that there was a cafe on the left side behind the museum, but we couldn't see it. We decided to see about museum food, since most museums have some. If we'd read this sign better, we'd have known it did.

There was some construction going on inside and a big exhibit in the center of the floor, so you had to hug the margins. We found the cafe, which turned out to be the one I'd seen on Google. The food was rather artsy, which is one of the things we like about museum food and why we try to eat in museums as often as possible. Besides our 2 Coke Zeros, we got a chocolate croissant for $3, a fudge brownie for $2.75, a chicken tarragon croissant for $7.15, and a spinach and feta croissant for $2.75 and split everything to be able to try it all. The only seats we saw were just inside the door at a tall table. If we'd looked outside, we'd have seen more regular tables around the margins of the museum. But, we didn't see them until it was too late. We must have been very hungry, as we didn't realize we hadn't taken a picture of the food until it was too late.
We were there for the dollhouse exhibit, but to pay the admission fee for the museum, you wind up in the Icebergs exhibit. So, we started there at 2:24, after paying $16 each, which seemed a bit high, but there you go. It isn't part of the Smithsonian, which is free.
Icebergs do not seem to go with a building museum, but after we walked through the installation, we decided this museum, where an Presidential Inaugural Ball will take place in January, was the only museum in town with enough floor space for it. The various icebergs had bits of info, like after the Titanic disaster, a monitoring system for icebergs was set up in the Atlantic and no life or property has been lost to an iceberg since. There was a berg for kids only to go in,  although they were running amok in the whole thing as it was. There were big bean bags for lounging and, in one berg, there was a snowball stand. You could go up metal stairs in a very large iceberg. I sent my daughter up and photographed her peering down. She was disappointed, when she did not fit on the slide to exit with her backpack and had to walk down more stairs. When we went upstairs later, you could really see that the netting, which was easily looked through on the first floor, was meant to be the ocean and you got the above water effect, as seen below.

Next up was the reason for our visit, the dollhouses. I was very happy that they let us take pictures, although I wound up buying the exhibition book after all. This 300 years of dollhouses exhibit is from the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood in London and this is its only stop in the US. I am not interested in owning old dollhouses, but I do like seeing them in museums. I am always amused by their mixtures of scale. But, then again, that's one reason I don't want to own one. This exhibit also had recordings of various "inhabitants" of the houses telling you about their day or what they were doing. There was also an area for children to put on aprons and work in a large play kitchen, reminiscent of those that might be in the old dollhouses.
 In the house below on the right, you can see the mixing of scales.

This modern high rise was meant to let kids put things in whatever order they liked.  I loved the exterior of this relatively modern Tudor, but not the interior.

 This really nifty, modern-looking house with a pool, actually dates to the 1930's.

 This ultra modern one I've seen in online catalogs. I like some of the furniture and the layout of the house.

On the wall behind this house, you can see some rectangles. The museum asked some US artists to design their dream rooms and create them for this space. Some did things that really were rooms and others did weird, artsy things. I preferred the rooms. Here are three I liked: an artist's studio, Harry Potter's room under the stairs complete with Hogwarts letters flying in through the mail slot, and an ultra-modern bath.

After this exhibit, we decided to go upstairs to check out the view on top of the icebergs, as seen above. There, we happened upon the House and Home exhibit, where, unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures. We strolled through, looking at the small models of famous homes, but more particularly at the objects that would be found in homes. We saw old TVs, dishes, games, and other household items. I doubt that the people who originally used them would have expected them to wind up in a museum.
I also loved the following quote from Paul Fussell that was on the wall in the exhibit: "Since a housewrecker differs significantly from a homewrecker, the inference is clear that house and home mean different things."
Back downstairs, we headed for the exhibit titled "Around the World in 80 Paper Models", which my daughter was particularly anxious to see. Once again, we were not allowed to take pictures. The only good thing about that is that it saved me from about 80 photos! The models were so cool! It made you want to start collecting and building them.
In fact, there were a lot of paper model kits of famous places in the museum shop, another must stop for our family. I found myself picking out quite a few of these, which were on postcards. However, looking around more in the shop, I found cards with houses of various styles. I put back the famous places and picked up one of every house. I found some miniature kits and other items of interest, including postcards of the museum. Unfortunately, they did not have a pin. I wound up with quite a haul and my daughter chose a couple of items for me to give her as gifts in the future.
Finally at 5, closing time, we left the museum. We walked across the street to the plaza where the Metro station was to take pictures of the sculptures of lions there. Then, we went back across the street and headed north for our hotel. We arrived there at 5:17 and dropped all our purchases and the water bottles, before leaving 18 minutes later, texting my older daughter that we were leaving.
We had to go south and west to reach the Hard Rock Cafe at 999 E Street NW. The shady side of the street was definitely more comfortable. We were going to Hard Rock, because they had sent me a birthday coupon for $15 off and it would soon expire.
We arrived at 5:51 and soon saw her coming down the street from the bus stop. The restaurant was undergoing a major renovation and the greeter made sure to tell us the menu was thus limited. There were seats at the bar or outside, but I wanted to be inside at a decent table, even though that meant walking up stairs. So, we waited, meanwhile looking at what currently passed for the Rock Shop. Even though I already have the DC guitar pin, I managed to find a couple of others to add to my collection.
About 6:05, we were told to go upstairs, where the guy would seat us. Well, he disappeared and it took a few minutes for someone to show up to lead us around the balcony, because that is what the second floor really is, and all of its construction to the other side and seat us at 6:10.
While my older daughter got her usual Coke, my younger daughter and I ordered Mango Berry Coolers, which were quite delicious. Unfortunately, they gave you no plate to put the strawberry stem and the rind.

My younger daughter and I did not split our meals tonight. She ordered the Hickory Smoked Pulled Pork and enjoyed it.

My older daughter liked her Hickory Smoked Pulled Chicken, which is an item I've never heard of.

I asked what was on the Local Legendary Burger and decided it was not for me. So, I had to make a quick decision and went for the Original Legendary Burger. It was not as flavorful as one might like. I felt something should have been mixed with the meat to give it more flavor and not just a mass of ground beef. 

 To top it off, a fry with ketchup on it slipped from my hand and onto my white blouse. I had to go to the restroom and take it off and wash it out as best as possible. Luckily, the restroom on this floor was for one person at a time. Unluckily, there were no paper towels.  I told someone as soon as I left it, but when I went back after dinner, there were still no paper towels. Service in general was rather lacking.

We left at 7:15 to walk back to the hotel. Yesterday, my older daughter had been excited to see that there was a Rita's right down the block from the hotel and had decreed that we would not eat dessert at Hard Rock because of it. Rita's sells custard and Italian ices, which you are encouraged to have together. I ordered chocolate custard with mango strawberry ice. It was delicious, but I should have gotten a smaller size.

Being Americans, we ate some of it as we walked on to the hotel, which we reached at 7:42. The three of us finished them in the room and hung out for a while before my older daughter ordered an Uber and went home.
Another busy, good day!