Even though my family has moved farther away from D.C., we were still able to get there fairly easily, so Vivian and I went a couple times. After her first year of high school, she has a lot of questions about college, and she really wanted to do a college tour. I figured if I had to spend an hour walking around a college campus, it might as well be a nice one, so I signed us up for a tour of Georgetown. I'm really glad we ended up doing it, because it was a learning experience for both of us.
There were about 100 people at the start in one of the lecture rooms. An admissions officer gave us an overview of the undergrad program and the admissions process. Then, they broke us into three groups to walk around the campus. It's a lovely campus, and Vivian and I both enjoyed it. I don't know that this is her dream school, but we both have more information now, and that will help make better decisions as she really gets into the process.
While we were in Virginia, we spent a lot of time with some of our oldest friends, and we love to go to museums together. There's one in DC called the Hillwood Estate that I've wanted to go to for years, but never got to, so it was a perfect choice for the four of us to go together. It was very much our kind of museum.
We actually started out by walking around the gardens, which are incredible. There were traditional symmetrical gardens, but also more creative things, like a Japanese style garden.
There was also one building in the gardens that had a special display of some of the glass used in the house. Vivian especially loved the gold tinted glasses.
One of the most impressive buildings was the greenhouse. There were hundreds of orchids in it.
There was also a cutting garden. All the flowers in the house come from the gardens, and we saw several lovely bouquets on a our tour.
The house was designed to be toured. It was owned by Marjorie Merriweather Post, one of the richest women of the 20th century. She was an avid collector, and she wanted to share that with her guests and with future generations of visitors. To that end, she intentionally built in display cabinets for her many dishes.
We started in the kitchen. Then, we looked at the first set of dishes and headed upstairs. It's actually not a huge house. Don't get me wrong, it's big, but compared to some of the gargantuan mansions that millionaires live in now, it's reasonably sized. That doesn't mean that she didn't give in to indulgences. Her entire bedroom was pink, and she had a view of one of the loveliest gardens.
Her bathroom was also all pink.
The reception rooms downstairs were all lovely and elaborately furnished and decorated.
She also spent some time in Russia and collected lots of Russian art, including two Faberge eggs.
The last room on the official tour was the dining room. The table was incredible, and it was on full display because all of the dishes were glass. Our tour guide told us we were very lucky, because the table is usually covered in a table cloth and then laid with patterned porcelain.
There was also a more subdued eating nook, but it was still decorated with fresh orchids.
We made friends with our guide, so when the tour was done, she took us around to a couple rooms we hadn't gotten to on the official tour and told us more stories. It was a lot of fun.
We stayed and had lunch in the garden, and then headed back home. It was a lovely day out. The weather cooperated, and it wasn't that crowded. I'm sad that we didn't get to more museums, but this one was a perfect fit for us.
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