Above, in chronological picture format, is the second half of our first full day in D.C. After a relaxing mid-day swim, we headed over to the Air & Space Museum, which is pretty much Mecca for nerdy little boys. The first exhibit we took in featured a GINORMOUS SLIDE RULE and was all about the role of computers in aeronautical design. The entire A&S Museum (as Oscar referred to it all day, although to me "A&S" will always mean "Abraham and Strauss") was much more boffin-friendly than I remembered it, and the Star Wars memorabilia I had seen on a previous visit has either been mothballed or returned to the Skywalker Ranch from whence it came. You can see Oscar above, worriedly examining a vintage plane-spotting schematic so that he will be able to tell a German Fokker looking to strafe our house from a friendly British mail-plane.
We then went, after a bit of arm-twisting, out to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where free performances take place every weekday afternoon in the summer. I had chosen the most kid-friendly of these to attend: a revue of numbers from the musical "Mary Poppins." So had every single parent of children in the entire city. After schlepping out to the Foggy Bottom subway station and from there taking a shuttle bus, we found the Center mobbed with parents and their kids, most of whom were little girls. On the up side, the Center itself is just a stunningly grand place, worth a visit just to soak up the unique vintage-y poshness of the surroundings. I have never had the pleasure of treading on a more plush stretch of carpeting. We took a photo in front of the distinctive sculpture of JFK's Gigantic Head, done in a style that makes him look like a Claymation work-in-progress.
Ike requested barbecued pork buns for dinner. I was happy to try and oblige; we're staying very close to Chinatown. However, I was trying to save money, hoping to light on one of those cheap, revelatory hole-in-the-wall joints with paper tablecloths and sensational, flip-your-wig food. You know, the kind that don't exist. We went to a place called Chinatown Express, which had received wildly mixed reviews on Yelp! but managed to distinguish itself from all the other grotty Chinatown holes-in-the-wall by featuring an actual guy making actual noodles in the window. There was no crowd watching Noodle Guy when we went in, or I might have thought to avoid it, but you can see above the postprandial noodle-watching crowd, including Ike in the tie-dye. My veggie noodles were quite oily and not very good, and Ike's pork buns were not BBQ at all - sort of like vaguely garlicky/gingery meatballs in dough wrappers. Oscar, however demolished his plate of dumplings and is now hectoring me for a return trip to Chinatown Express for more. Not happening.
Ike's fortune-cookie fortune read: "You will set foot on the soil of many countries." This blew his freaking mind because, as he said repeatedly as we walked home from the restaurant, "It's true! My fortune is true! It's actually true!" I was not given a fortune cookie (another black mark against Chinatown Express) but if I had, it might have read, "You already regret paying twenty dollars for this meal." We are SO going to Jaleo tomorrow, if I have to DRAG THEM THERE BY THEIR HAIR.
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