Tag Archives: national building museum

I Love a Good, Air-Conditioned Beach

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Last summer, the National Building Museum in DC was the place to be with its Beach exhibit recreating the ocean with close to one million plastic balls. A giant ball pit for everyone – sign me up! We tried to visit while on vacation, but the wait was hours long and that doesn’t work when you have an impatient two-year-old. So we looked at the Beach from above, and played in the gift shop, and I didn’t really think about the exhibit again until I heard that Tampa’s Amelie Arena would be having its own Beach event, and it would be free to the public (just had to find available times on Ticketmaster or try for a walk-up spot). 

Happily, the four of us headed to Channelside to frolic at the beach on one of Keith’s Mondays off. Since we had tickets for the first time slot of the day, we didn’t even wait in line (although Henry is much better with lines now, it’s always great when you don’t have to wait!) We ate our free ice cream, Keith put Elliot in the K’tan, and we ran for the water’s edge. Henry had a blast! He couldn’t stop jumping off the pier into the plastic balls; as soon as I lifted him out, he immediately jumped back in. After 30 minutes or so, I traded off with Keith and rested with the baby on pretty comfortable chairs (once I made it out – it was really difficult to climb out of them on my own.) I liked relaxing the best, but it was pretty fun to act like a kid again jumping off into the “water.”

DC Adventures (Mostly in Food)

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Looking back at the pictures my friends and I actually took over our DC trip, most of them involved gathering around a table and enjoying delicious food and drinks drinks and even better conversation. We started off the weekend right with sangria (super sweet) and Jazz in the Garden. We sprawled in the shadow of weird sculptures with hundreds of others. Since we didn’t bring food, we walked to Hill Country Barbecue Market for melt-in-your-mouth brisket and so many sides. 

  
The next day we split a pizza and hummus appetizer at Pi Pizza, which totally hit the spot. For dinner, we met up with my fav aunt, Aunt Jane, at Ted’s Bulletin for drinks, tasty food including homemade pop tarts, and adult (spiked) milkshakes for dessert. Mine was key lime pie flavored with coconut rum, and it was definitely refreshing. 

   
 Sunday morning we headed over to Georgetown for brunch at Farmers Fishers Bakers. It was pricey, but the variety of breakfast and lunch foods was excellent and the cinnamon rolls and creme brûlée grapefruit were to die for. 

   
 On our last full day we ate lunch at the Mitsitam Cafe at the National Museum of the American Indian (http://www.mitsitamcafe.com/content/menus.asp), where it was difficult to pick which foods to eat because they all looked amazing. I ended up getting a variety of foods and not being able to finish any of them, but they tasted as good as they looked. We had drinks that night at Ambar, our first visit to a Balkan restaurant. I’m pretty sure I liked the American Indian restaurant the best, with Ted’s Bulletin a close second. 

  
We even saw a few tourist sites – the Natural History Museum and the National Building Museum. We saw all the highlights of Natural History in one morning! That’s how my two year old rolls. Actually, he ran through each exhibit, pausing for a bit at the animal and dinosaur skeletons, long enough to pet a caterpillar and a hissing cockroach, and took time to admire the beauty of the Hope diamond (oh wait, that was the adults). We wanted to check out the beach at the National Building Museum, but the wait was more than two hours on a Monday morning, probably because it was 107 degrees outside (not really but it was hot)! Henry had a blast playing with toys in the gift shop (he got one small fire truck for the plane ride home) and climbing up and down the stairs. The building’s design was beautiful with its rows and columns of arches and spacious interior. We will have to see the exhibits next time we visit DC, especially if Henry still likes building and destroying things.