What a day

What a day indeed. DH and I headed downtown to see the Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibit at the Hirschorn (good), but before we made it there we stopped to visit the US Botanic Garden (so many orchids - excellent) and had lunch at the new Native American/American Indian Museum's cafe, Mitsitam.

I had read Tom Sietsema's comments in several of his chats that this was the best place on the Mall to eat - boy am I glad I listened. The cafe is cafeteria-style; you grab a tray and choose from Great Plains, Meso-America, Pacific Northwest, South America, or Northern Woodlands food. I thought at first, "whoa." I was just going to get a chicken sandwich or something because nothing looked remotely familiar to me. Then I thought, "what is the matter with me?" So I walked around all the "regions." I went over to South America and asked the guy behind the counter what exactly was a "tamal?" He explained that it was corn masa and chicken and some other stuff stuffed and steamed inside a corn husk. Hmm, interesting. Eventually I went ahead and got a chicken tamal (unbelieveably tasty,topped with peanut sauce tool, with a side of red rice and beans (pretty good) and a roasted sunchoke salad (that was over at the Pacific Northwest station, also unbelievably tasty). The sunchoke salad was Jerusalem artichokes, cranberries (I think) and sunflower seeds in some dressing that I don't know. If I could make it at home, I would in a heartbeat.

The long and short of that paragraph is if you have the chance to eat there - DO IT. And don't wimp out on chicken fingers and fries or a turkey sandwich or something. Get something different! DH got a buffalo indian taco on frybread - which was also pretty tasty (I think mine was better, though)

We ended the day with a quick visit to the National Gallery to catch the last day of their exhibition of three statues from Orsanmichele in Florence (pretty interesting) and to run through the new Dada exhibition (I really wanted to see the Mona Lisa with a mustache piece - otherwise way too crowded). Finally, just as they were closing the museum, we left and metroed home.

Needless to say... our feet are sore. But it was a good day