la journée des musées

We're getting so close to the big one-zero-zero! This is getting exciting! People will say, "you've been blogging every day since January?" And I'll say, "No, since December 31". This morning we got our second taste of the metro, and luckily we didn't mess it up like yesterday. We weren't on it for nearly as long as yesterday either, and we went to Federal something to get to the Smithsonian Natural History museum. And it was raining. It was also windy, and sideways rain and wind aren't really great weather days. My umbrella did one of those inverted things like when you dress up as someone from Chicago on Halloween. So we got into the museum and it was all wet from a bunch of other people trying to get out of the rain. When we got upstairs to look around, we saw this giant whale that overlooked the biggest aqua exhibit I've ever seen. They had extinct marine animals, arctic animals, and even a crochet coral reef! That led into the biggest human evolution exhibit ever. It had insane artifacts from all over the world and videos from people who went to Africa to investigate these civilizations. After that we got to see dinosaurs and rare gems which was one of my favorites, next to the evolution one. After that we went to the National Gallery, and on the way we got to see this giant sculpture in this park. I knew that it was made by Claes Oldenberg because he does cool sculptures of things that are usually small, but he makes them larger than life. It's nuts. The best part of the NG was seeing actual Monets, Vermeers - yes, it's true - and van Goghs. I almost fell on the floor when I saw the two pictures of Rouen cathedral lined up on the wall. It wasn't Google images - this was it. Claude Monet painted them and I got to see them in flesh. I even breathed on them. But the best part of all was seeing three - count 'em three - paintings by my all-time favorite painter, like, ever: Johannes "Jan" Vermeer. Only the artsy really know about him. He only made 35 paintings, and some of them are not even credited with his name. He was always an enigma, and if you read The Girl With The Pearl Earring, it makes him even more exciting. That's obviously the best one he ever did. But at the NG was A Lady Writing, the one with the lady in the red hat and another one, but I forget the name. It was ultimately surreally epic. But we never got to see the modern art, which I wanted to see the most, so we're going back on Thursday. We walked like 7 thousand blocks to get back tot our hotel and my feet were throbbing so bad I thought the lower layer of my foot would slide off. A little gross, I know. But it's all good because we got to go to Bertucci's! Best place ever! I chowed on like half of the pizza because it's just so good. Then we came back and they delivered Haagen Dazs ice cream to our door. Don't you love that? Then we went swimming until all hours and came back to crash. Now I'm going to crash. I'll see you ...