A Local's Museum Tour

Description:

Few Washington DC luxury hotels can match Hotel Madera's elegant atmosphere, sense of refinement, and service that anticipates your every need. Step into Hotel Madera, and discover an intimate, earth-conscious oasis in the heart of the nation's capital. Quietly tucked in the colorful neighborhood of Dupont Circle, this warm Washington DC hotel accommodations offer solitude in one of the city's most exclusive settings. Echoing elements of nature, the décor sets the tone for a tranquil and luxurious stay. Warm hues, clean lines, soft fabrics, and rich textures transport you from the urban energy outside to the serenity of an inviting, private hideaway. Details like grass-cloth wallpaper and animal prints add to the sleek, tranquil ambiance prevailing throughout these gracious smoke-free Washington DC accommodations. Gather with friends for a wine hour in the lobby. Order a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies to nibble on before turning in. Few Washington DC luxury hotels offer such a unique combination of refined elegance and nature-inspired comfort.

Description:

Phillips Collection [STST] -- This charming museum is even more alluring now that its expansion is complete. Its elegant 1890s Georgian Revival mansion anchors the Phillips, as it has since the gallery opened in 1921 (America's first museum of modern art). Founders Duncan and Marjorie Phillips, avid collectors and proselytizers of modernism, once lived here; now Impressionist, modernist, and American master gems from the 2,500-work permanent collection reside here. Intimate galleries retain homey features: leaded- and stained-glass windows, oak paneling, plush chairs and sofas, and individually designed fireplaces. The new wing houses the main entrance, as well as galleries devoted to special exhibits; a cafe run by a local favorite, Firehook Bakery; a sculpture garden in the courtyard; and, most wonderfully, the Rothko Room, the small room devoted to four large, color-intense paintings by abstract expressionist Mark Rothko.

Best known for its Renoir masterpiece, Luncheon of the Boating Party, the Phillips boasts works by Daumier, Bonnard, Vuillard, van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso, Degas, Klee, and Matisse. Ingres, Delacroix, Manet, El Greco, Goya, Corot, Constable, Courbet, Giorgione, and Chardin are among the premodernists represented. American notables, besides Rothko, include Dove, Hopper, Marin, Eakins, Homer, Lawrence, and O'Keeffe. You'll enjoy viewing the collection for an hour or so.

A full schedule of events includes temporary shows with loans from other museums and private collections, gallery talks, and concerts in the ornate music room. Concerts take place October to May on Sunday at 4pm; arrive early. On Thursday, the museum stays open until 8:30pm for Artful Evenings, usually a lecture or film screening.

Note: You may tour the permanent collection for free on weekdays. Weekends, admission is $10 per adult, $8 for seniors and students 18 and older. Special-exhibit admission prices vary, but are in effect weekdays; on weekends the regular admission price covers entry to both the permanent and special collections. The Phillips almost always has a special exhibition on view. You may order tickets in advance at the Phillips, or through Ticketmaster, online at www.ticketmaster.com, or by phone at tel. 800/551-SEAT (7328).

Our Local Expert Says:

As to be expected, the building is a site worth seeing.

Description:

This palatial building contradicts its slightly dull and dusty name. Designed after Italian Renaissance palaces, the brick and terracotta building contains a massive 15-story interior with eight Corinthian columns that are 75 feet high. The space has been the site of inaugural balls and a popular Christmas television special. Several tiers of arcades ring the Great Hall, offering space for a variety of architectural exhibits. Foremost among these is a look into the planning and design of Washington, DC. Children will love the touchable model of the nation's capital.

Admission:
Visitors can enjoy the Great Hall, Museum Shop, café, or a docent-led tour of our historic landmark building free of charge. The prices below include access to all galleries, including LEGO® Architecture and the Building Zone, and docent-led exhibition tours, where available.

• Free for Museum members, children age 2 and under, and Memorial Day through Labor Day active-duty military and their families
• $8 for adults
• $5 for youth (ages 3 through 17), students with ID, and seniors (age 65 and over)
• $3 per person for the Building Zone only, the Museum's hands-on building gallery for children 2 to 6

Description:

It takes a unique talent to incorporate elegance with a tempered mood in a small location while maintaining good prices, but Matchbox in North West DC has accomplished it. DC's business professionals and mere passers by are greatly rewarded when finding this Vintage Pizza Bistro just on the outskirts of Chinatown. Equipped with some of the best gourmet pizza in DC, Matchbox lives up to its Bistro signature; yet its ability to combine a romantic ambience with food ranging from Filet Mignon to Pan-Seared Sea Bass, and finishing off with a "Quitting Time Cocktail" makes for an endearing evening.

Our Local Expert Says:

Many DC locals think this is the best of the National Art Museums.

Description:

Famous and distinguished Americans are honored here in portraits, photographs and other visual media. A wide variety of politicians, artists, scientists and social activists are represented. This gallery is a remarkable testimony to the diverse figures the United States has produced, from Grace Kelly and Boris Karloff to George Washington, Mickey Mantle and Gertrude Stein. Photographs, prints, drawings and sculptures supplement the paintings. Of particular interest is the Hall of Presidents, which features a portrait or sculpture of each chief executive.

Admission is free.

Description:

The first art museum in Washington, the Corcoran Gallery, founded by Washington philanthropist William Wilson Corcoran in 1869, focuses on American Art. The rotating main collection includes a variety of American art spanning from older pieces to modern works by Nevelson, Warhol, and Rothko. The building of the Corcoran is in itself impressive, and its convenient location between the White House, the National Mall, and many of the national monuments make it an easily accessible museum for locals and tourists alike. Also home to a school of art, the Corcoran Gallery is well-known for its wide variety of rotating exhibitions. For the most up to date information, see http://www.corcoran.org/exhibitions/index.htm.

Our Local Expert Says:

Good inexpensive restaurants and crowded college bars make this a must for the post-4. collegiate DC crowd.

Description:

A true melting pot of DC culture, Adams Morgan offers a little bit of something for everyone. Centered at 18th street and Columbia Road, by day, it is the one of city's most interesting neighborhoods, with a large variety of unusual stores. By night, the true character of Adams Morgan emerges. Traffic comes to a near standstill as 18th street turns into one of the hubs of DC's nightlife scene. Adams Morgan has a wide variety of restaurants serving food from a variety of countries such as Ethiopia, Turkey, Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, Italy, Vietnam, and Ghana. Almost every restaurant transforms into a bar or nightclub come sundown. At 3 AM, partiers flood the street again, looking for late night food including falafel and DC's famous "Jumbo Slice" pizza. Adams Morgan is a must-visit for those that want to experience one of the most diverse dining and nightlife areas of DC.

Description:

Popular with local Adams-Morgan diners, Pasta Mia is an old-style pasta place. The restaurant is casual, friendly and reasonably priced, a perfect place to stop for dinner before club-hopping in the neighborhood. The sauces served here are simple, freshly prepared and excellent. Meatless sauces are the specialty, but a few cater to meat-lovers.

Description:

Wolf Trap is the only national park for the performing arts. Performances are held at the Filene Center Memorial Day through Labor Day. The Filene Theater seats 4,000 under the roof and 3,000 on the lawn. There is also a theater in the wood performances for children in July and August. Backstage tours of the Filene Center are given by the National Park Service. The park is located in northern Virginia, Fairfax County which is just south of Washington, D.C.

Description:

Open since April 11, 2008, the Newseum is as much a fun house of participatory experiences and special-effects exhibits as it is a museum. In fact, the Newseum's tag line, "World's Most Interactive Museum," conveys its purpose in allowing the visitor to step into the picture: to play the reporter, TV journalist, researcher, or editor. The museum boasts 125 interactive game stations, 2 state-of-the-art broadcast studios, 14 galleries, and 15 theaters. At this particular time in history, with the business of journalism undergoing a world of change, the six-story Newseum manages to capture the magic of past, current, and future ways of covering the news.

First, take a look at the exterior, best viewed from across Pennsylvania Avenue. Covering the left side of the facade is a 75-foot-high tablet inscribed with words from the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech or of the press . . . "). Through its glass front, one can see (though much better at night) the huge high-definition screen hanging inside the atrium, spinning news story images. When you cross the street to enter the museum, you walk by a display of the day's front pages electronically obtained from newspapers across the country and around the world. Once inside, staff direct you first to the orientation film on the lower level (personally, I'd say skip this), then to the glass elevators that shoot you to the sixth floor. The outdoor promenade on its own is worth the price of admission, since it offers you a breathtaking view of Pennsylvania Avenue and the Capitol. Also take time to read the fascinating history of Pennsylvania Avenue and of the city, presented in an exhibit that runs the length of the terrace.

Fifth-floor exhibits cover history. A display of "Great Books" presents 20 books and documents (originals, not copies) that are widely considered our "cornerstones of freedom." These include the 1475 printing of Thomas Aquinas's "Summa Theologica" and a 1215 edition of the Magna Carta. Next to the display is a touch screen; touch the image of the book you'd like to examine and the screen presents that book, allowing you to scroll through the first few pages. Nearby, the History Gallery showcases the Newseum's extensive collection of historic newspapers and magazines, tracing 500 years of news. Several theaters on this floor continuously play short documentaries in which esteemed journalists talk about ethics, sources, "getting it right," and other topics.

On the fourth floor, the First Amendment Gallery explores the historical contexts of the five freedoms. The 9/11 Gallery displays items recovered at the World Trade Center, images and reporting from that day, and an 11-minute film featuring personal stories by journalists who covered the attacks. While at first glance it appears to be a modern sculpture, one artifact on display here is in fact a 360-foot piece of the antenna that had stood on top of the North Tower.

On the third floor, check out the display of New Yorker cartoons joshing the news. In the World News Gallery, you can tune in to a current news broadcast from one of many countries (I listened briefly to a report from France on the Tour de France). The "Dateline: Danger" exhibit displays artifacts from hazardous missions that journalists have undertaken -- including the laptop computer used by Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl before he was killed and the bloodstained notebook of TIME magazine reporter Michael Weisskopf, who lost his hand in an explosion in Iraq. Following that exhibit is the Journalists Memorial, a sobering display of 1,843 names written in a glass tablet to mark the deaths of those journalists who have died in pursuit of the news between 1837 and 2007. Elsewhere on this floor are several studios used by news organizations -- including NPR and ABC -- to broadcast programs. Visitors can sit in the audience during broadcasts or take behind-the-scenes tours when the studios are not in use.

A veritable playground for news junkies of all ages awaits on the second floor. An interactive newsroom with 48 kiosks allows you to test your skills as a photojournalist, editor, reporter, or anchor. An ethics center tests your sense of ethics. And, for a price ($8.50), you can try your hand at news anchor, reading from a teleprompter as a staff person tapes you, then watching your performance on screen.

The first floor's gallery of Pulitzer Prize photographs leaves one speechless. The gallery's database of interviews with some of the photographers, a documentary, and vignettes accompanying the photos offer fascinating context to the craft and to the stories behind the photographs.

Last but not least, return to the concourse level to view the I-Witness, a 4-D film feature that makes you feel as if you're on the scene with legends Isaiah Thomas (radical printer, not basketball legend), Nellie Bly, and Edward R. Murrow. I'm not saying another word, except: Don't miss it.

The Newseum's on-site restaurant, the Source, is already a favorite of Washingtonians. The museum has several gift shops.

Description:

This impressive, several-story building is home to close to 100 artists' studios, and also displays the works of many talented craftspeople.  Every type of artistic material, from paintings to textils, are available to view and often to purchase.  Private events here are quite special, owing to the building's interesting archtecture and to its location on the river.

Description:

Chef Peter Smith opened PS7's in 2006 after many years working the kitchen at the award-winning Vidalia. His culinary artistry is on excellent display here, but first you must navigate the fey menu, which organizes foods in categories of "Cool" (salads and such), "Hot" (soups and pastas), "Aqua" (fish), and "Terra" (meats). An Aqua entree might be sautéed sea scallops with Jerusalem artichokes; a Terra entree could be olive-and-garlic braised lamb shoulder. And though the portions are small, the food is rich . . . and delicious. We liked the short ribs, tuna sliders (bites of tuna tartare on Parker dinner rolls), fried oysters, and spring rolls. The dining room is elegantly modern, with floor-to-ceiling windows, lots of dark wood, and hues of charcoal, brown, and blue. The restaurant also has an expansive bar/lounge, whose menu features several items from the main menu -- including those tuna sliders and fried oysters, each priced at $7 during the popular happy hour. But the lounge seating can make noshing problematic, so stand for a drink and then head to the dining room for a proper tuck-in.

Description:

Zaytinya specializes in Greek, Turkish and Lebanese food, with its concept of mezze (small plates, similar in size to tapas).  Standout dishes include taramasalata and calamari.  It's consistently included on DC's "top restaurant" lists, with the bonus that it's actually quite affordable.  Located about a block away from the Verizon Center, Zaytinya is a great place to kick off your evening, or to wind down after a show or game.  Happy hour specials are good here too.

Our Local Expert Says:

A superb Irish bar in the Farragut/South Dupont Circle area, Mackey's also has a number of TVs for catching the game.

Description:

The red-painted wood exterior of this establishment is designed to give it a sense of "Irish pub" authenticity. Sandwiched between two rather sedate office buildings, it is hard to miss. The pub is spacious, a perfect meeting place for large groups or impromptu "happy hours." The back room of the pub is designed for private parties or catered events; it includes plenty of space in which to mingle.

Our Local Expert Says:

Fox and Hounds is one of the best places to sit and people watch on 17th sty. In the summer, the outdoor patio can't be beat.

Description:

This neighborhood pub is tucked between Dupont Circle and Adams-Morgan. Fox and Hounds offers a friendly atmosphere and plenty of singles action. The outdoor cafe is an ideal spot for watching the action on 17th Street. At all times, patrons will find that both drinks and food - standard pub fare, such as burgers and other sandwiches - are served with a generous hand. Customers enjoy the large number of coffee-liqueur drinks, wines by the glass, imported beers and microbrews.