There were more pictures from our visit to the Portrait Gallery than fit comfortably in one post.
One of them is this view from our hotel room, kitty-corner across the street.
The museum is unusual in The District; it stays open until 7pm. Intrepid Cat tells me that it is a popular meeting spot for 20-somethings after the rest of the Smithsonians have closed, and it is true that the atrium under that white dome stuck on top of the otherwise elegant if stolid building was filled with her age-mates when TBG and I wandered through at dinner time.
It's an absolutely beautiful building, at one time the largest open public space in the city. There are galleries and mezzanines and winding staircases of all dimensions and construction. Marble and polished wood, stained glass in the windows, lintels and frames carved with love.
Even the doorknobs were special.
Coming up and then coming down, we smiled at this lovely sight.
It was a much more welcome place to feast our eyes than the photos we found in what we began to call The Ego Gallery.
LL Cool J took up more space than Marilyn Monroe, Babe Ruth, and several presidents combined.
He's inescapable, positioned on a pass-through wall, all brocade wallpaper and glower.
Joining him in the Look At ME! gallery was everybody's least favorite NYC mayor:
looking all together too pleased with himself.
We wandered through Presidential Portraits and Signers of the Declaration of Independence.
We paid homage to Ben Franklin.
We admired the tables decorated for a formal party that evening and then we were done.
Out into the light drizzle we went, in search of dinner.
Shake Shack was grimy, Gordon Biersch too noisy, but Pi Pizza was perfect.
To hear TBG tell, it was the best pizza he's had in a decade, served by the world's best waiter.
I was so tired I could have been eating cardboard.
Back out we went, breathing the city air into our airplane-infested lungs, looking around our neighborhood for the weekend, and there was the Verizon Center, with a gigantic video screen congratulating the Capitals and encouraging the Wizards and advertising airlines and I'm not sure what else because I studiously avoided paying attention to it.
It was there when we went up to our room, so we drew the lacy curtains and watched Jason Bourne on Showtime, reveling in the adventure.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, with good pizza in between.
Life is good.
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