Day 11: A Great Day in Our Nation's Capital

Strangely enough, after all my years on this earth I had never really visited Washington DC. I had been through the city a couple of times, but never visited any of the sites.
What a beautiful city! I love the design and scale of everything.
The first thing we did today was to leave Mr Ripley at a doggie day care place in Alexandria called "A Dog's Day Out". Before they would let him stay he had to have an "evaluation" to make sure he was friendly with other dogs. Any of you who know Mr R know he passed that test with flying colors!
We drove to DC and pretty quickly found a convenient parking lot. Our first stop was the Capitol Building where we took an interesting tour. I especially loved the Rotunda which was quite amazing. We just wanted to have a quick lunch and thought about just getting a hot dog from a sidewalk vendor but since it was raining we decided to eat in the capitol building. The dining area had stations with foods from various regions. I had a very good pulled pork sandwich. A pleasant surprise.
Our next stop was The National Gallery of Art. I could spend several days there and indeed plan to do so in the not too distant future, but today we only had a couple of hours. There was an excellent show from the Chester Dale Collection called "From Impressionism to Modernism." We loved the show and since Mr Dale stipulated that his collection not tour, it was a great chance to see some very important pieces that we'd never seen before. We also went to the east building to see a Mark Rothko show. We hated to leave, but we wanted to at least see something at the Smithsonian.
We went to the Smithsonian Castle to get a guide to what was where. We went to the Smithsonian American History Museum. We went to the information desk and asked where the Julia Child exhibit was and then without us asking the woman looked at us and said, "And the first ladies' gowns are on this floor"--she certainly knows her audience! We did indeed see the Julia Child exhibit and the gowns as well as a popular culture exhibit which included Dorothy's ruby red slippers from the Wizard of Oz and Archie Bunker's chair.
Even though it was raining we wandered around to see some other sites especially the White House. I had some dog biscuits for Bo but he didn't come out on the lawn to see me. He probably doesn't like the rain.
When we went to pick up Mr R he was still playing with the other dogs but seemed glad to see us. The attendant said he had played most of the day and spent much of the time with 2 Golden Doodles who were there.
Since we enjoyed seeing some of Old Town Alexandria last night we decided to return there for dinner. We went to a place called the Warehouse Bar and Grill which was excellent. I had shellfish baked in parchment paper which I loved and Dwyne had a stuffed Flounder that he also liked. We let Mr R nap in the car while we were eating dinner and afterwards we got him and walked along the waterfront and around the old town area. Of course, he made a few friends along the way and even got a treat from someone at the visitors' center.
We plan to leave fairly early in the morning to drive to Old Saybrook CT.