Today we went to the Newseum, a museum dedicated to freedom of the press, which was quite amazing: we saw a piece of the Berlin Wall, also, among other things, a collection of historical front pages, my favorite being probably the one reporting on the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his Morganatic wife. After the Newseum my friend and I had Peruvian for lunch in a place that had really cool decor and where the food showed a pronounced Asian influence.
Then a friend from grad school came and picked us up and took us to the Botanical Gardens where we saw the most beautiful orchids in the Conservatory. It was fun seeing my friend from long ago, whose career path has also veered away from academia and who is happy living in DC and raising her little boy. We talked about books, ate gelato, talked a little about people we both knew, and a Boston Terrier named Gus who belonged to one of the professors in Binghamton and whom we both babysat at different points in time.
Today was colder than yesterday, and also a bit drizzling. But despite that we had a nice time. The drawing is of a statue of Count Rochambeau we saw while walking around yesterday. We didn’t see any monuments today, except the Capitol, from the distance.
