Sounds and Flavors of Downtown DC

Thanks for being patient while I catch up on my posts! Here's what happened during a fantastic Thursday evening on the town:

Two of my favorite museums are housed under one roof in Downtown DC. The American Art Museum and Portrait Gallery always feature new and interesting temporary exhibits in addition to their impressive permanent collection. The portrait gallery is where you can find the America's Presidents exhibit, the only complete collection of Presidential portraits outside the White House. Stephen Colbert somehow convinced the curators to temporarily hang his portrait in this gallery (right by the entrance to the restrooms). It's now on display at the American History Museum.

We checked out the new Lincoln exhibit featuring photos and portraits of a young and old Lincoln. The captions talked about the teasing Lincoln often received because of his unconventional looks. His response: "If I had another face, do you think I'd be wearing this one?". Who knew Lincoln had such a sense of humor? Another interesting photo was of Lincoln's first Inaugural address. Supposedly you can see John Wilkes Booth in the background ominously foreshadowing Lincoln's assassination.

In addition to the fabulous art, the museum offers great public programs and other free events including the Take Five! live jazz concert every third Thursday of the month. This month performing live was the Blue Sky 5, a swing band playing some great oldies from Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, and Benny Goodman. Accompanying the band was a group of professional swing dancers who impressed us with their fast footwork and acrobatic flips. I'm trying to convince Josh to take a lesson with me. Take Five! is a great Thursday night activity. The music plays from 5-8 so it's a perfect pre-dinner activity for one of the many restaurants right around the corner.

And that's exactly what we did. After listening to some great music, we headed over to La Tasca, a Spanish tapas restaurant right across the street from the Verizon Center. La Tasca is a popular after work dinner spot. They have great weeknight specials (we went on 1/2 price sangria night) that appeal to DC's young professionals crowd. Josh and I had a strawberry and blueberry sangria and feasted on some amazing dishes. Included in our favorites were the patatas bravas, a fried eggplant dish, and grilled lamb. La Tasca is definitely becoming one of my favorite restaurants in all of DC.

After dinner we went to Rocket Bar where in addition to your typical games like pool and darts, you can play Jenga and other boardgames. Here we caught some of the March Madness games and then ended the night at our favorite local hangout The 51st State.

That's all for now. Coming up... examining America's history and democracy: Capitol Hill and The Archives.