A Quiet Friday at the Museums

It was a beautiful day here in Washington yesterday and the streets on Capitol Hill were empty. So we went for a pleasant walk down onto the Mall (where the crowds were much bigger) and stopped in at the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art.

They have a couple of neat exhibits there right now. One is "Warhol's Headlines" -- a fascinating collection of Warhol paintings in which he takes newspaper headlines and turns them into art. His small changes are sometimes amusing and always interesting, but the idea of just copying a newspaper kind of makes you wonder what art really is. Still, he's iconic and it was fun to see so many of his paintings in one place.

A highlight of the visit was the Portuguese tapestries -- a recently restored set of tapestries that recount the conquest of Tangiers in the early 1400s. We'd seen the Bayeux tapestries a few years ago and these were much the same but on a much grander and finer scale (after all they are 300 years later in history!). We could have spent an hour just looking at the 4 of them -- well worth the trip.

And then, surprise! A small room with some more moderns out of the regular collection including some old friends, Monet, Manet and Cezanne. Also a new Mondarian that we hadn't seen before. Quite fun.

We topped the day off with a quick trip to the National Building Museum for their new exhibit on "Unbuilt Washington" -- a collection of drawings and concepts for parts of DC that never got built. A pyramid for the Lincoln Memorial. A Memorial Bridge with medieval towers. An East Capitol street (where we live) with a row of Federal office buildings. Moving the Supreme Court to where National Stadium is now. A real fun walk down "what might have been" lane and well worth the trip.

Add in tapas at Jaleo for dinner and a brisk walk home and what could be a better day?

Makoto -- 4 Stars

We went to Makoto Restaurant the other day with our friends Connie and David. Calling Makoto a "Japanese place" or a "sushi bar" simply doesn't do it justice. What Makoto is, is one of the finest and most enjoyable dining experiences in Washington.

Granted, Makoto is not for everyone. For one thing, the chef really has a set of "rules" that he expects everyone to abide by. They tell the story (one hopes it is apocryphal) of how he once fired a customer and kicked him out for insisting on a sushi preparation the chef was not willing to make. So be prepared -- there are no shoes allowed and no cell phones permitted. And if you order beef, the chef will ONLY make it medium rare -- so don't ask for beef if you like yours cooked all the way through.

On the other hand, if you can put up with the chef and his idiosyncrasy, be prepared for a magical experience. We all chose the 9-course tasting menu (reasonably priced at $60/person -- drinks extra) and it was worth every penny. Over the next 2+ hours we had courses ranging from a tasty mussel broth to tuna sashimi. We had beef sabu and pomegranate with tofu sauce. We had shaved ice with boysenberry, an orange roughy, and avocado with a miso-soy sauce. Each of the dishes was just a small 2-3 bite size portion so you didn't get at all full.

Perhaps the highlight was a single piece of shrimp, wrapped in a tasty black bread, and then deep fried to perfection, sprinkled with a green sea salt/crushed red pepper mix. Yum.

The menu is seasonal -- you won't see this menu ever again. But the next experience will, we expect, be just as good. Go and enjoy (and have some cold sake too!).

Manitou Springs, Colorado

We are out in Colorado for the weekend. On Monday, Paul has a conference at the Broadmoor, so we came out ahead to spend some time up in the mountains with our friends Jim and Dar. We are staying at a great little hotel called "The Cliff House" where we have found good food, fine rooms and truly wonderful service.

Yesterday, we spent the day mostly walking around Manitou Springs. It's a quaint little town with lots of little shops. It tells you everything you need to know that it boasts a Dulcimer shop and a shop specializing in hemp products. Retro-hippie, with chai and mate and crepes everywhere you would look.


In the evening wandered down to Colorado Springs (15 minutes away) to listen to a concert by a group called Gaelic Storm, the specializes in celtic rock. Great fun. The fiddler and the drummer were particularly skilled.

Today we took a slightly different tack. We went for physical activity. We started with a horse back ride through "The Garden of the Gods" (a great red rock area near the Springs) and then we went up the Cog Railway to Pike's Peak. Unfortunately, it was so windy that we couldn't get all the way to the top (80+ mph) but we did go to 12,000 feet before turning around.

Tonight we are going out to dinner with the fellow who will be producing our film. Jim and Paul have participated in the start up of a 501(c)(3) company (Esprit de Corps Productions) that will be making a moving about how communities can help veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Especially on Veterans' day weekend, it is good to remember that more soldiers and sailors and airmen will be returning from these wars than we have had in American society since WWII.