DC Quickie

I hadn't been down in "The District" since 2013, so visiting a friend who lives outside of the city in Maryland was a nice little change of pace.

I use to date a guy at the beginning of college who lived in Alexandria, so taking the bus to DC's Chinatown was a regular occurrence. Being back in the city definitely brought a lot of memories rushing back but I was also there making some new ones with some old friends.

My friend Mandy from high school lives in Maryland now about a 25 minute metro ride from the center of DC.  I had been wanting to visit for a while and it just so worked out that we were both available the weekend I wanted to visit.

I wasn't sure if we were going to get any city time but we decided to venture out on Saturday to visit The National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery of Art.

We went to the National Portrait Gallery first.  They had a couple of different cool exhibitions on view.  I was most excited to see the Marlene Dietrich exhibit along with the one on Sylvia Plath.

Marlene Dietrich focused on her image and dress in the media during the 2nd world war.

She was very androgynes for her time and portrayed a strong independent woman whom other women looked up to and some men were intimidated by.  She performed in a lot of films and refused to be a part of Hitler's regime in any way shape or form.  She is iconic for her time and it was inspiring to see all of the photos of her during her height of popularity.

Sylvia Plath is one of my favorite writers and I've always felt like it is difficult to find photos of her other than the back cover of her books. This exhibit included photographs from her younger years, her ponytail in a glass case preserved by her mother, a number of her earlier poems typed and hung in coordination with different photographs, her drawings and paper dolls are among the few things to be seen in the gallery. 

It was so fun getting to see some of these hidden treasures of Sylvia's past.

Here were a few other things I captured at the Gallery:

After the portrait gallery, we stopped over at Bantam King which is a very tasty Ramen place in Chinatown over on G Street.

 Mandy 💓

Mandy and her hubby to be, Seth

Cate and I

 Chicken Ramen! 🍲

I'm no foodie, but this ramen was absolutely delicious and really hit the spot after a few hours of walking around the museum.  Shortly after lunch, we decided to tackle the National Gallery before heading home.  The museum has 2 different galleries separated by time period and movement.  Pre-Modern art and Modern art/Post Modern. Since most of the morning was a good blend of things at the other museum we took what I like to call "The People Mover" over to the modern side of the museum.

My favorite painting that I came across at this museum was this actual finger painting. If you look closely you can actually see the artist's finger prints. Amazing

The details left me completely speechless. All I could muster while looking at the piece was "Wow."

It's nice to get out of Jersey every once in a while to revisit a place I haven't been in years or just to visit some place that isn't New Jersey! I don't get to take a lot of weekends like this but I feel blessed to have friends who live in nearby places who keep their door open for a visit. I haven't been able to have a weekend anywhere since I went to DC but it was a nice change of pace.

Looking forward to the next adventure~

-Kristina