Which one's the White House?

The National Gallery of Art is simply the most amazing museum I have ever been to. There was so much to see that I was completely overwhelmed. Anybody who was ever somebody when it comes to art is in there at least once, if not many times over. I fell in love with Cezanne's work, there was a Philip Guston show in the tower that was stunning, Monet, Manet, Vermeer, Renoir, Van Gogh, Ruscha, LeWitt, Pollock, everybody. I even liked the Donald Judd I saw there. The building itself is huge, cavernous, especially the West building where all the permanent collection is. I don't think I managed to go everywhere in the almost three hours I spent there. On the way there, I saw the usual stuff (Capitol, Washington Monument, etc) and then took a peek at the White House, which was rather hard to find because there are so many other buildings that look about the same. But the White House is, indeed, whiter.

I smell like rain. I thought I would be okay without an umbrella, but I thought wrong. I'm now pretty soaked as I sit on the train back from DC into Baltimore. My jacket is soaked through, my jeans' lower reaches are soggy, my hat feels heavy and my shoulder hurts from carrying my bag. I think I should make use of the fact that I have this fancy convertible bag that can turn from shoulder bag to backpack. Would be gentler on my poor back and shoulders.

Union Station in DC

The woman sitting across from me is loaded down with bags upon bags. She apparently spent her day in DC shopping at Bed, Bath and Beyond, buying a whole kitchen's worth of stuff. She's been arranging and rearranging it for the last 20 minutes or so. The train that I'm on now seems to be a little faster than the one I took coming in. I must detrain now.

The best thing I saw in DC was not the National Gallery, however. That honour belongs to the license plates of DC residents, which, even on the police cars, say Taxation Without Representation. I love this official subversiveness so publicly displayed. It really does make no sense as to why people living in DC have no representative in Congress so it is a legitimate protest. I'm just surprised it's so mainstream to think this way.