Sunday, April 28, 2019

Greetings from the I-270 Corridor

We had a super, super-busy Saturday starting right after breakfast when we headed out to Gaithersburg, followed by a visit to Bethesda and Garrett Park before we went downtown for the evening for dinner and to see the Clintons! Here is our day in photos:

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This is Jordan Klepper emceeing An Evening with the Clintons, to which I won tickets from a local radio station. It was awesome. More on them in a bit.

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We went in the morning to Lake Whetstone in Montgomery Village, where we saw many geese, goslings, cormorants, and turtles...

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...plus this duck and her ducklings swimming in the windy lake. We were going to walk all the way around the lake, but the water was so high that we'd have had to get our shoes drenched, which we did not want to do given our itinerary, so instead we went a quarter of the way around one direction, then a quarter of the way around the other.

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From there we continued in Gaithersburg to Washingtonian Lake because I knew from the other day that there were lots and lots of goslings there. We had to hunt a bit behind the hotel to find them, but we counted 26 babies. Plus we brought sandwiches and had a picnic at the tables by the Rio playground.

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After the goslings, we went to Strathmore in North Bethesda, where there is an exhibit of kaleidoscopes in the mansion. It is spectacular (and free!) and I highly recommend it to everyone in the area.

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There are tiny metal kaleidoscopes, large glass kaleidoscopes, enormous room-filling wooden kaleidoscopes, and everything in between.

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Then we headed up Strathmore Avenue into Garrett Park to see the famous neighborhood azaleas, which are just peaking and are gorgeous!

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In the late afternoon we drove into DC, parked, and had dinner at Rasoi Indian Kitchen, where we had Begumi Thali -- a sampler of vegetarian entrees including fantastic Nawabi Kofta curry plus samosas, naan, and rice pudding. After that, we walked several blocks near the White House to DAR Constitution Hall, where both our kids (and me!) graduated from high school.

We did not know that Klepper was going to be hosting the event with the Clintons, which was a nice surprise -- we've always liked him on Comedy Central. We knew nothing about the format of the show before we got there along with a very enthusiastic, partisan audience who laughed and clapped heartily. The Clintons had an obviously prepared spiel with photos about the philanthropy work done by their foundation, but they were quite entertaining talking off the cuff about the past and upcoming elections.

Hillary, no surprise, is very sharp, on target, sarcastic humor, diplomatic talking about current candidates but stressing the need for clear, practical policy; Bill clearly loves sound of own voice but he's also quite funny, very proud of Hillary and also of Obama (outraged that Hillary was accused of playing loose with secrets when Obama had been surprised she hadn't told Bill about the Osama Bin Laden raid). The line that got the most laughs was when he was encouraging people to remember what we all have in common as humans even at the genetic level, when he said that Hillary was not at all surprised to learn he had Neanderthal in him.

Will write more about everything tomorrow but we're going to see Avengers: Endgame in the afternoon so I need to get to bed!

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