Estonia Throw Away: Weekend... 6?

Friday night we went out for nacho-tater tots and amazing burger sliders, and ended up at an Irish pub completely with music! Cead mile fáilte!

Saturday:

First stop was the Scottish Rite Temple. Pretty impressive building, especially the sphinges (which I learned is the plural of sphynx).

Second Stop: Kramerbooks. Yes.

Third Stop: Random wanderings through Embassy Row Part 2, which included stumbling across OES HQ. Check out this wicked fencing!

Fourth Stop: Georgetown. I picked a different direction than I have the last several times I've been in Georgetown, and headed up the hill. Gelato called my name: Thai Coconut Milk and Marscapone & Berries.

Georgetown University. There are things that have looked worse.

Sunday:

Wandering around Alexandria was slightly more complicated, since I got off at the wrong stop (Thanks, Google Maps...) but I found the Old Town. Kinda cool, kinda of exactly what you'd expect. It'd be a cute place to window shop.

But! I found my way to the George Washington Masonic National Memorial. I'd seen it from the Metro before, and recognized it from the pictures of my mom's visit. I didn't think it would be open on a Sunday, but it was, so I got a tour, too! There's quite the walk up to the front of the building. Not sure who designed it, but they made some... interesting choices.

View of the walk-up from the observation deck.

I took a bunch of photos for a variety of purposes, but it was so cool to see everything they had. The entrance hall is dominated by a giant bronze statue of George Washington presiding over his lodge. It was donated by DeMolay, and then carried up all the steps to the front hall of the building. Here's a photo of it being pulled up the stairs:

Not sure DeMolay thought this all the way through....

We started with a replica of Alexandria Lodge #22, with the WM chair donated by Washington and used by him. Most of the furniture was from the Lodge room Washington knew and presided over. There were bios of some of the first WMs, their countries of origin and relationship with the Lodge, etc.

From there, it was up to an exhibition hall with information on appendant bodies. (That dress still looks better in white.) I recognized the black dress in the OES display, and couldn't quite place it. Luckily, it's labelled, and I'm pretty sure I saw the woman who donated the dress in it several times. Then we moved to a two story room donated by Scottish Rite to house displays on the various aspects of George Washington: farmer, president, general, family man, etc. Pretty cool room, though after seeing all the George Washington photos being hilariously captioned right now, I couldn't take many of them seriously.
Then it was up to Knights Templar chapel, complete with replica suit of armour and real 800 year old sword. And finally the observation deck, currently colonized by bees.

I wandered "through" the Andrew Jackson Lodge Room on my way out. There are two lodge rooms in the building, one is currently being used by a Lodge and OES Chapter. Might have to add that to my list of things to do... But the Jackson room is not currently in use. It's massive and huge and beautiful and hopefully my Lodge still has time to make alterations to their nearly-complete building. :)

ARCHITECTURE OF AWESOME

Of course, wandering around old buildings necessitates photos of cool houses. For your viewing pleasure, I present the following: