Weekend in DC
I had a conference in Washington last week, and Chelsea came down at the tail end of the conference so we could spend a little kid-free time together in the nation's capital. I'm having a little bit of trouble getting all of our pictures off the camera, so these updates may take a couple days to finish out.
Friday evening we went to the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit at the National Geographic Museum, and it was amazing. The story: In the 1970s some farmers in rural China accidentally discovered an underground warren full of terra cotta statues. These statues comprised an army - some 7,000 in all, of which only 1,000 have been excavated so far. They were made to guard the tomb of the first Qin emperor, around 200 BC.
In the traveling exhibit now in DC, they have maybe a dozen of the life-size statues, which not only include warriors, but also horses, strongmen, musicians, and acrobats. It's as if the entire court of the emperor was rendered in terra cotta. Finding the statues has been a huge boon for the field of archaeology. The statues are so detailed that they have provided valuable clues on how materials were created and used in that time, data that are not otherwise available because organic materials have decayed over the centuries.
Until I can upload my pictures, you can see an amazing gallery of images here.
Saturday we met up with our college friend Bethany and toured the Smithsonian museums. Here are the ladies at the entrance to the freshly-renovated American history museum:
One of the highlights in the museum for us was Julia Child's kitchen, which has been relocated in its entirety from the Childs' former home in Massachusetts:
It's not nearly as big a room as you would imagine, though I think it is probably about 50% larger than our kitchen at home.
We also went to the National Museum of the American Indian, which was fascinating, though we only had about an hour to spend there before closing:
We took Amtrak back from DC that evening, so it was a pretty brief visit - less than 48 hours in town for Chelsea, and slightly longer for me because of the conference.
I'll work on recovering more of the photos in the next few days.
Friday evening we went to the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit at the National Geographic Museum, and it was amazing. The story: In the 1970s some farmers in rural China accidentally discovered an underground warren full of terra cotta statues. These statues comprised an army - some 7,000 in all, of which only 1,000 have been excavated so far. They were made to guard the tomb of the first Qin emperor, around 200 BC.
In the traveling exhibit now in DC, they have maybe a dozen of the life-size statues, which not only include warriors, but also horses, strongmen, musicians, and acrobats. It's as if the entire court of the emperor was rendered in terra cotta. Finding the statues has been a huge boon for the field of archaeology. The statues are so detailed that they have provided valuable clues on how materials were created and used in that time, data that are not otherwise available because organic materials have decayed over the centuries.
Until I can upload my pictures, you can see an amazing gallery of images here.
Saturday we met up with our college friend Bethany and toured the Smithsonian museums. Here are the ladies at the entrance to the freshly-renovated American history museum:
One of the highlights in the museum for us was Julia Child's kitchen, which has been relocated in its entirety from the Childs' former home in Massachusetts:
It's not nearly as big a room as you would imagine, though I think it is probably about 50% larger than our kitchen at home.
We also went to the National Museum of the American Indian, which was fascinating, though we only had about an hour to spend there before closing:
We took Amtrak back from DC that evening, so it was a pretty brief visit - less than 48 hours in town for Chelsea, and slightly longer for me because of the conference.
I'll work on recovering more of the photos in the next few days.
