Building Museum reopens in Washington DC

I have good memories of my exhusband and I visiting Washington DC in May of 1987 -

Flying in to National Airport, plane curving to land, beautiful view.

Walking along the mall, past people playing baseball.

Seeing the Vietnam Memorial (tears).

Seeing the Capitol Building. Going to a luncheonette in the Capitol Hill area.

Going to the National Museum of Art, going to the Hirshorn Museum.
(didn't do the Smithsonian, but I saw that as a child)

Walking along the mall near midnight, almost skiing across the grass, to see the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, which
I had see a couple of times as a child, long ago;

Wandering into the Hay-Adams and being stared at by the staff (we were fairly well dressed. Wonder who was staying there..)

Having lunch at a sidewalk cafe on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Walking a long way down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Seeing the homeless in Lafayette Park, amazed.

Walking into a hotel, the Warwick? with a neat old wooden bar, and a Sky Room, at the Washington? which we peaked at.

Going to the Building Museum to check it out and possibly visit with a colleague's sister in law, who is/was a curator... and it was closed, but we could look through the doors, interesting building.

Checking out a hotel my father stayed at in the forties and fifties, the Mayflower;

Going to Georgetown and seeing Dunbarton Oaks, the fine estate by Beatrice Farrand.

Meeting a friend who worked for someone important whose name I forget at a cafe in Georgetown. Walking along the C & O Canal.

Having a dessert at some little French bakery.

Walking around the Catholic University area,

going to have a drink at the Ritz Carlton and, nuts, I can't remember, I think we saw people picketing about Reagan and AIDS. Funny about memory. Either there was a demonstration or something else happened right about then that we didn't see ourselves, police wearing rubber gloves or something. Maybe I just saw the headline. But the memory is tied in with our walking into the Ritz Carlton, which was very quiet and luxe.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn, not luxe, but ever so handy, and had midnight snacks in the hotel coffeeshop. It was across the street from the Watergate, which of course I had to look around.

Went down to Virginia and saw Monticello and George Mason's estate. I wanted to see if we could find where my family lived in Fairfax when I was six, but we were tired after checking out Alexandria. (memory coming back, I got sick from the soft shelled crabs...)

Oh, a few more places.. We stopped a minute at the national headquarters of ASLA, the landscape architect's society, sort of a kick for me, who had just recently been licensed. That was at the time near what turned out to be one of my all time favorite museums, the Phillips Collection, near Dupont Circle.

- A busy four days.. only four because we missed our connecting flight and had to stay one night at some hotel near the O"Hare airport before catching a flight to Washington.

O'Hare, damn. I haven't been back to Chicago since my childhood either, and there I was stuck in the airport at 1 a.m. with an early flight.

Anybody else been to Washington?
picketing about Reagan and AIDS.