"It doesn't have enough hands-on stuff," Melanie complained.
"If you were here for a week, you couldn't read everything," Jake chimed in.
Out we marched into the fresh air to take in the sights of all those glorious buildings that rise above Washington's National Mall. The Capitol and its signature dome shined white in the sunlight at one end while that famous obelisk, the Washington Monument, seemed to pierce the blue skies. Sandwiched in between were all those colonnaded facades of buildings my wife, Lisa, and I were itching to spend time in - the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Freer Gallery of Art. But we understood quickly that if this was going to be a family vacation, we had to prioritize sites and assume that the children would burn out after an hour or two at each locale.
So we said ta-ta to that rare da Vinci painting inside the National Gallery to remain outdoors and frolic through its sculpture garden. Roy Lichtenstein's colorful sculpture of a house slanted downward and looked like it was moving as you walked around it. There was also one of Louise Bourgeois's monumental spiders and Claes Oldenburg's immense typewriter erasers. The kids feigned interest when their art historian mother tried to provide insight on each of the artists, and Melanie was soon sprinting over to the carousel.
That night, the kids were complaining once again when I told them we were going to a Middle Eastern-Asian fusion restaurant in Georgetown called Mie N Yu.
"Can't we just have pizza?" said Melanie. "Or Mexican," said her brother.
"No, we're going to try something different," I said as our foursome made our way in.
"Wow, this is different," said Lisa, looking up at a foursome eating inside a large steel birdcage.
