The weather forecast wasn’t too good: rain, wind, cold. But when we got there, the rain stopped, the wind was just what we needed for kites, and Sunday was cold, but bearable.
We started with an IMAX movie about our National Parks at the Museum of Natural History, which gave the sky time to clear and the wind to pick up a little. We walked to the Washington Monument and the Cherry Blossom Kite Festival was becoming more colorful with every minute as more and more people arrived. We had fun flying our kite and watching all of the kites in the sky.
We checked in at our hotel, ate lunch at Clyde’s in Tyson’s Corner, and went to the Kennedy Center for a concert by the National Symphony, which included the Brahms Violin Concerto, La Mer by Debussy, Pavane by Mauré, and In Aeternam by Pierre Jalbert, who was in the audience for this first-time performance by the NSO. Click here for a review of the evening’s music.
After a delicious and leisurely breakfast at the hotel, we drove down to Mount Vernon. We strolled around the grounds, sat on the chairs on the piazza, and enjoyed the view of the Potomac, and then drove to the Distillery and Gristmill about three miles away.
We really enjoyed a very interesting tour and demonstration in the Gristmill and learned a great deal about making rye whiskey in the Distillery. Very interesting, a lot of fun, and the fact that both the Gristmill and the Distillery are currently in operation made it very real. We were amazed that, in Washington’s time, eight employees made 10,000 gallons of whiskey each year.
