sudden trip to D.C.-Smithsonian attack!

I took a compulsive and surreal trip to Washington D.C. this weekend. I didn't know I would until Wednesday, and I was flying there on Friday evening. (ATA has an awesome fare to the East coast right now. $59 for each trip!) With the cheap air fare, cheap B&B ($60 per night for a double room with shared bath), excellent seafood and Trinidadian cuisine (hmmmmm....), and several pictures of cool amphibians, it was a great, impulsive weekend.


This is one of them... Taken in a reptile house (an insult on all the amphibians there!) of the National Zoo, he looks as if he just had a religious epiphany, looking skyward, with light shining on his face. I fell in love with the mint green body and the golden eyes, and took about ten pictures of him, so kindly blocking the view of a couple of small children. :P

I did what a first-time visitor is supposed to do. At the White House, I saw a squirrel bleach the strict security, which included at least two snipers on the roof, watching through binoculars an anti-nuclear protest in the plaza across the street. At the Washington Memorial, they were doing a complete overhaul of the lawn around it, currently showing a vast muddy field studded with heavy construction equipments. It was quite suggestive--a phallus symbol of America towering over a lifeless devastation--hmmmm. The historic Georgetown seemed to be under attack of corporatization. With Urban Outfitters, Berns & Noble, GAP, Banana Republic, (and don't forget the Starbucks), sadly, the area had started to look like a pseudo-historic shopping mall in any sprawling suburbia.

All these aside, there were Smithsonians after Smithsonians. Temporarily overwhelmed by the Freer and Sackler Galleries (Asian art) and Hirshhorn Museum (contemporary) that we did on Saturday, we decided to inhale some fresh air at the National Zoo. I thought it was an escape from anything Smithsonian, but it turned out that it was still a part of the Smithsonian federation! It was an exciting zoo, though--we ended up spending more than four hours there, mainly gazing at and taking picture of spiffy creatures, such as this. The cage was poorly lit with several fluorescent lights, but the light filtered through the big bird's beak was absolutely gorgeous.