saturday outing: fast gourmet + meridian hill park

After our delightful experience at the Hirshhorn, everyone was hungry so we headed to Fast Gourmet. Two brothers from Uruguay opened this sandwich shop inside a gas station in the U Street corridor. We ordered the Chivito (which happens to be on the Post's list of "must try dishes" in D.C.). It was amazing (layers of beef tenderloin, roast ham, mozzarella, bacon, olives, mushrooms, onion and a sliced hard-boiled egg in a soft roll, all pressed and heated). It seemed like it might be too much happening on one sandwich, but all of the flavors complemented each other well. We were glad that we shared one though. The kids devoured their chili dogs sans chili. And the empanadas were divine.

Fast Gourmet happens to be a block away from Meridian Hill Park. We had fun hanging out, enjoying the beautiful weather, and watching Oliver's extreme attempts to get into the water features. The park was loaded with all of his favorite things: stairs, water, dogs, and open spaces to wander. (His great determination to climb into the fountain is captured in the video below. And that bongo drumming? It never stopped. Ever.)

Ben and I even got to end the day with a date featuring dark chocolate milkshakes and The Hunger Games. Which seems especially luxurious now since I haven't seen much of Ben since then.

Empanada. And why is drinking from a mason jar so fun?

 

saturday outing: inside the hirshhorn

I love the Hirshhorn Art Museum. It's a perfect size (we can see the whole museum with the kids without wearing out), has an easy-to-follow layout, and great exhibits.

The kids were so curious about all the different works of art. I love that they get to experience so many things like this, and for free! Amelia was drawn to the paintings (and declared that some of the modern art looked like it could have been done by children). I already raved about Doug Aitken's Song 1 exhibit here. But there are so many awesome exhibits happening inside the Hirshhorn too.

Like Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color, and Space. This exhibit is fantastic. We were excited the second the elevator doors opened and everything was blue. We all had so much fun experiencing light and color throughout the exhibit. The girls were absolutely giddy about the blue strings you could walk through. And Oliver was incredibly happy to wander (without shoes) through the white rooms and see the colors change.

 

The extremely realistic giant hiding in the corner was alarming. Elsa was completely scared of him but tried to fake enjoyment for the photo.

 

Another favorite exhibit was "O.K.," a video installation by Ali Kazma. Seven channels of synchronized video, running on an endless loop, of a notary stamping hundreds of documents at a crazy fast speed. I can't explain how mesmerizing these videos were. Nobody could take their eyes off the screens. (Except Oliver who was put to sleep by the rhythm of the stamping.) You can see a YouTube video of it here.

saturday outing: hirshhorn sculpture garden

A few Saturdays ago we made the most of our day together. Ben had been working long hours to get ready for the hospital opening at Johns Hopkins (gone by 5 a.m. and home after 10 p.m. every night). And unfortunately he's still working long hours, essentially on-call for all of their crazy surgeries in case anything goes wrong with his operating rooms. So far they're off to a good start.

We started at the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden. The new installation of Ai Weiwei's "Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads" was definitely a favorite. Amelia is really into the signs of the Chinese zodiac so she had everyone pose with their appropriate animal (and it should be noted that she is not happy about being the year of the rooster).

The girls were fascinated with all of the sculptures in the garden and would run with excitement from one sculpture to the next. It was interesting to hear their interpretations and questions (why doesn't he have a head? what happened to his arms? what IS that?).

Ben and Oliver share the tiger.

I don't think the bird was an original element of the art.