Smithsonian

Today we took the bus into Washington DC and had our choice of Smithsonian Museums to visit. I chose the National Gallery of Art to start with. After three hours I'd walked through 41 galleries (13th to 15th century Italian, 16th century italian and spanish, 17th century italian, spanish and french and 18th century german, 15th to 16th century netherlandish and german, and part of 17th century dutch and flemish. I learnt a lot, but I was exhausted, and decided I needed a change, so I missed french, british and american and a whole bunch of sculpture and porcelain in the remaining 50 galleries.

By the way, I didn't know that El Greco wasn't his real name, it just means The Greek. And I can't see why some artists became famous and their contemporaries didn't, when their paintings seemed just as good to me.

Anyway, after lunch at the cafe I took the underground walk from the West Gallery to the East Gallery and had a look at some modern art. I decided I don't understand modern art. At all. I did try.

Then I found my way to the sculpture garden (mostly under renovation) and thence to the National Museum of Natural History. Tuesdays there's free entry to the live butterfly exhibit. They had some glorious butterflies from all over the world, and they're very strict about making sure they don't escape to become feral pests. The temperature was tropical so I didn't stay long.

I dropped into the gem collection to admire the Hope Diamond, which has an exhibit all to itself, and took a look at some large topaz, rubies and other jewels. On the way back to the bus I saw an albino squirrel, very tame, hanging about the food concession in the Mall.

On the way back to the hotel we dropped into Walmart to pick up some necessities. It so happened the Walmart was relocating the next day, so they were shutting early and we only had 20 minutes to shop. It's impressive how fast we can shop when we have a deadline to meet.

Back on the bus, back to the hotel for happy hour. We carry our own liquor with us and have a team of guys organised to set up the bar whenever there's an opportunity. The hotels are very accommodating about giving us space to do this. I was awarded first prize for the Aussie entry in the biography competition: a White House christmas decoration, and a very pretty scarf.

Then off to dinner at the Outback Restaurant: good food, good service, and not too expensive. We sang Waltzing Matilda (the Aussie contingent is mostly basses, so we weren't equpped to do any four part harmony).

Tomorrow we head back to Washington for a guided tour, and then most of us are going to dinner at the Pentagon Mall and a show at the Kennedy Centre called Shear Madness. It should be fun.