Art, History, Bricks and Brotherly Love

Beyond learning French, my goal while here is to play tourist as much as I can. Every weekend, I hope to go to a museum, see a site or something. Last weekend, I went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. I’d swung by before, but it was swamped and I kind of sped through one floor.

This time, I arrived shortly after it opened and headed to the top floor, assuming I’d work my way down. Well, it’s just not possible to see it all in a couple hours, which is my threshold for crowds. I made it mostly comfortably until noon and, shortly thereafter, hit that “get outta Dodge right now” moment and quickly exited. At that point, I had almost – like 95 percent – finished the top floor. There is just so, so much to see.

Honestly, the Smithsonians are amazing places, and when you read about their research, outposts, etc., it becomes more and more amazing. Everyone should come to D.C. and see as many as possible. I would love to do a tour of one of their storage units, or whatever they call them, where the bulk of the stuff not on display at this museum or that museum is stored. It’s staggering.

My guess is the Natural History Museum is the kids’ favorite because of the giant elephant right inside the foyer and all of the skeletons. There were just so many school buses and kids, though not until about noon or so. I’ll head out there again to do another floor, but it will be at 10 a.m. sharp and I’ll maybe last until 1 p.m.

I had no idea the Hope Diamond was in the Smithsonian. How cool is that?

There are so many museums and cool things here that I hope I can make a dent in the list, but there are also things a short drive – or bus ride – away. Like Philadelphia, which is where I went last weekend. It’s under four hours by bus, and cost less than $45. The train is slightly more expensive, but the bus had more time options, so I went with that.

It was fantastic! I’ve been to Philly once before, but it was probably under the age of 15 and the only memories I have of visiting are two photos I (or maybe someone else) took. One’s Independence Hall and one is of the Liberty Bell. That was, I’m sure, in the days where you had a camera with a 24-exposure roll. This time around, I probably took 24 photos of the Liberty Bell itself.

I had short list of stuff to visit and hit all but one of those, but had no regrets. I did not eat a cheesesteak, but that was a result of caving on a milkshake around noon, which followed an amazing breakfast at some random place I walked past on the way to the Rocky statue. I just couldn’t eat anything else and did not want to stuff myself before getting on a bus – not a good idea. Instead, I bought some TastyCakes, which are also a taste of Philly.

Outside of “eat a cheesesteak,” my entire list was Rocky statue, Independence Hall, Liberty Bell and an art show. I also visited the Betsy Ross House, Elfreth Alley (oldest residential alley), the Reading Street market (where I got the milkshake) and the cemetery where Ben Franklin was buried. My hotel was right downtown and completely overrun with people at an educational convention. I mean, it was packed with people. I was a bit bummed that the lounge was closed on weekends because I’d counted on the free snacks but ah well.

All the liberty stuff was super cool, but oh man, The Art of the Brick at the Franklin Institute. Phenomenal. I’d searched a couple weeks ago what was going on in the city for the weekend and that’s what I came up with – an art exhibit comprised entirely of pieces made from Lego bricks.

Here’s the description, from https://theartofthebrickexpo.com/en/.

“The Art of the Brick immerses the visitor in the world of Nathan Sawaya: a cheerful and colorful world. The artist used more than a million bricks for this exhibition, creating over 70 works of art that can make adults and children smile and reflect. The collection includes a great variety of sculptures alongside re-imagined versions of some of the world’s most famous art masterpieces, such as Michelangelo’s David, Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.”

Since I couldn’t get there before 5 p.m., I didn’t go to the museum itself and only did the exhibit, which had evening hours as well. Honestly, it was the best $20 I’ve spent in some time. I cannot imagine how much time and Lego bricks were involved, but the Easter Island sculpture itself was made from over 75k pieces.

The vision Sawaya (a former attorney) had with Lego bricks is incredible. His exhibit encompassed several themed rooms, opening with replicas of famous works of art such as American Gothic and Starry Starry Night. Next, there were scaled-down versions of sculptures that included David, Venus de Milo, the Easter Island thing and a lot of other ones that looked vaguely familiar from humanities class. Another room featured animals, some of them very close to life size (tiger and cheetah), but others scaled down but still gigantic (whales and polar bears). There’s also a room with one installation: a 20-foot-long dinosaur skeleton that has over 80k pieces.

Each room wowed and I literally took pictures of every single work of art, sometimes more than one. I love American history, but that exhibit was the absolute highlight of the trip.

My grocery store is moving

My nearest real grocery store is about five blocks away, which is convenient. When I was here in November, I noticed the building across the street had the same name on it and wondered what was up and now that I am back, I have discovered it’s because the store is moving in April.

By “across the street,” I don’t mean a major highway, or even a minor highway. It’s barely a two-lane road; it’s really more like an alley. It can’t possibly be that different than it is now. Maybe they’re getting better rent – who knows?

They’ll have to move everything, I suppose, but honestly, they could form a human chain with the existing employees. The new place is that close to the existing one.

When I ran to the store last week for a couple things, I saw that they had all the frozen food on sale in preparation for the move. My guess is they can move the perishables but they can’t risk perishables. Since I’d come from class and only had a backpack, I couldn’t get much, but I returned on Wednesday with my carry-on to load up.

They’d had 12-packs of Coke for B2G2, but when I went that day, it looked like there’d been a fire sale. There wasn’t a single 12-pack left, and even the display had gone. However, I got some smaller ones and then hit the frozen foods, which had been 25 percent off. When I discovered they were now 50 percent off, I totally loaded up. Seriously, I may not have to buy frozen veggies before I leave. Not much variety, but broccoli is broccoli.

Knowing that they will be moving next week, I went again today, armed with my reuseable bags. I even redid the Tetris game that is my freezer so I could fit a few more bags of whatever in there.

But when I went in, there was barely anything in the frozen food section. And by “barely anything,” I mean four aisles of completely empty (but cooled and lit) displays. There was one small section and I could buy all the Cool Whip I wanted. They had that, two things of ice cream (never heard of the brand, but I’d bought some on the previous run so I was OK), two frozen pizza crusts and possibly some frozen bread. That was it.

The rest of the store also looked like it’d been ransacked, but ransacked in an orderly fashion. Everything was consolidated and neat, but there wasn’t much of it. I went to grab some brownie mix, 2 for $4, and didn’t immediately see Box. No. 2. There were literally only two of them left, and I had to reach all the way back to find the second one. I got it, though – just to make the trip worth my while.

All I really needed was grits and carrots, so even though I didn’t need all the bags I’d brought, it worked. I’d spent $50 before (on $90 worth of food) so today was gravy. Except they were out of gravy.

Fortunately, since I am so stocked, I won’t need to go to the new store until it’s been broken in. Until then, I’ll be eating down my freezer.

Although this seems like a boring subject to discuss, it’s taken my mind off French for a hot minute. Holy cow, learning a language is hard. This isn’t “let’s take a language class once a week at the rec center” or even a high-school type class. This is all day, every day, and then I come home and basically redo the class, do an increasingly large amount of homework, review some YouTube videos of French lessons and watch a TV show in French. I’ve had dream about French (not in French) since week one, and they are getting more intense.

This is not my wheelhouse but I am trying. Three of the four people in my class are on about the same level, though I think we all have different strengths and weaknesses in learning. I was talking to one of them and she said maybe when we rotate (in about 3-4 weeks), we will wind up in the “dumb” class. Trust me, there’s no offense taken – we are both struggling. But she freely acknowledged that she doesn’t spend a whole lot of time on the homework and I do. She’s successfully gone through another language course at the school and this is my first one. (And only, God willing.) I keep hoping that it will click but so far there’s been no such luck.