6-21-22 National Museum of American History and National Gallery of Art

 After breakfast this morning we rode the metro from U Street to Metro Central to purchase our passes.  The attendant at U Street was very nice and let us enter through the emergency entrance and ride the train for free so we could get to Metro Central.  We then got off at the Smithsonian exit and got to the history museum for their 10 AM opening.  We toured the third floor very thoroughly - we saw the American Presidency, the First Ladies, the Price of Freedom (all of the wars from the war of independence through the Vietnam war, and the gunboat Philadelphia.  We looked for the ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz, but they were not on exhibit (sorry, Dotty Jo).  We then realized that it was almost noon so we went to the cafeteria for lunch.  After lunch Dave left us to make his way back to the house (he got a bit lost on the way and ended up walking a good distance).  On the way out of the cafeteria we spotted a Statue of Liberty made of 25,375 legos!  It is 9 feet 5.5 inches tall and too a team builders 292 hours to create.  Nathaniel and I went to the second floor to see the 1813 flag that flew over Fort McHenry.  This is a huge flag and inspired Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner.  My favorite was Lincoln's hat.  Nathaniel like that, but he also like the WWII posters.  Dave's favorite was the Philadelphia.  We then walked down the Mall to the National Gallery of Art.  

We had a wonderful afternoon looking a works by Monet, Degas, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir among others.  There was one painting by DaVinci in the gallery.  It is a portrait of a young lady and was quite beautiful.  It is hard to believe that this was his first portrait.  We then visited the Afro-Atlantic Histories exhibition.  It was very interesting, but sometimes a bit hard to look at as much of the exhibit dealt with slavery.  One of the paintings was of Cinque.  He was the person who led the takeover of the Amistad, an African slave ship.  Those friends who live in Connecticut will be familiar with the story as the replica is frequently at Mystic Seaport.  We also came across a statue of Venus from Italy.  We had a miniature of the same statue in our living room that we purchased while over there. We walked through the sculpture garden on the way back to the metro station.  We got home and put our feet up for a short while and will be going out to dinner soon.