Life of Lydia

Dear readers, my favorite day of our D.C. trip was the one in which we visited Mount Vernon, home of George Washington. When we were planning our trip, I asked my mother how long it would take to fully see Mount Vernon. She told me that it could easily take a whole day. I was disappointed because I had been hoping to spend several days at the site.

Upon arriving at Mount Vernon, we discovered that it is a popular destination for busses full of kids. I believe I counted 19 tour busses that were parked. Not surprisingly, the visitors center was a bit crowded.

We began our day by visiting the George Washington museum. This museum is split into two sections. One section consists of interactive exhibits, and the other houses actual artifacts.

My mother demonstrates viewing an exhibit. If you would like to see a video I made about the museum, click on this LINK.

There were three life sized wax statues of George Washington. This one depicts him at age 19.

This is “My dear general” as Lafayette would have seen him.

We participated in an activity called “Be Washington”. You watched a video that dramitized a situation Washington encountered. Then you selected on the little screen in front of you what you would have done in the situation. At the end, you found out if your decision matched up with Washington’s. This activity felt very high tech. I wish I knew how much money it cost to install it.

The third wax statue featured Washington being sworn in as president.

On the other side of the museum, there were actual artifacts to see. My favorite was an original painting of Lafayette. According to the sign, this painting originally hung in Mount Vernon, but for some reason they took it down and put it in the museum. We later learned by observation, that there is now a copy of the painting in Mount Vernon.

When I asked my mother to pose with this painting of My Dear General, she just stood there, not looking particularly interested. I said “Act, like you’re excited!”, so she clenched her fists. Later, when Luke saw this photo, he asked why mother was preparing for a fist fight.

After we had finished going through the museums, we went outside to wait for our house tour. We came across a little table that had some laminated pictures on it. (Sorry I don’t have a photo.) There was a Mount Vernon employee standing behind it. As we walked by she told us that at her table she was talking about African Americans during the American Revolution, and asked if we would like to hear about that subject. We said “sure”, so she started talking. We both quietly listened until she brought up Marquis de Lafayette and how he was an abolitionist. My mother pointed to me and said “She just did a National History Day performence about Lafayette’s views on slavery!” I was very, very embarrassed, but I lived over it.

I was very excited to tour the house. Each touring group didn’t have one guide that led them through the whole house. Instead, in every room there was an employee who gave a little talk about the room as each group came through.

The tour began by visiting some outer rooms.

This was the first actual room we went into. You can see the Mount Vernon employee giving his talk. I didn’t expect the inside of Mount Vernon to be so fancy. I also expected the rooms to be bigger. These sentiments were not at the forefront of my mind during the tour, but I have discovered them due to later reflection. There was one thing that I was keenly interested in as the tour progressed. After the fellow pictured above had finished his talk, I took the liberty of aproaching, and speaking to him.

“I understand that the key to the Bastile is in this house,” I said. The tour guide gave an indistinct gesture of assent. I saw no need to beat around the bush, so I simply asked, “Where is it?” The tour guide said he didn’t want to spoil it for me, but that I should keep an eye out for a large key on the wall of the next room. This was the only answer I needed, and I happily thanked him and made my way to the next room.

This is a photo of me with the one and only key to the Bastile, given to Marquis de Lafayette by the French public. Lafayette proceeded to mail the key to George Washington, who put it in a box and hung it up on his wall where it had been ever since. I was beyond excited to see this artifact. While the tour guide for the room was giving his talk, I was quietly flipping, taking pictures and generally displaying all expected beheviors considering the circumstances. At the end of his talk the tour guide said, “Now some of you (a.k.a. me) have already noticed this, but on the wall we have a very important artifact.” He went on to talk about the key for a minute or two. Getting mentioned by the name of “some of you” made me feel very self satisfied.

Isn’t it beautiful?

If I remember right, this was called the green room. Seems fitting.

This bedroom was where Lafayette slept when he came to Mount Vernon. There is a reprint of the Lafayette painting on the wall.

There were a lot of spare bedrooms. If I ever re-do my private chamber at home, I think I will model it after this one.

After the tour, my mother and I enjoyed the backyard of Mount Vernon. My mother made this her profile picture on Facebook.

I tried to form a pensive pose.

We went back into the museum to view another artifact. It is a block from the Bastile that has been chisled into the shape of its origin. We heard conflicting accounts of why George Washington had this.

There are two restaurants at Mount Vernon, a food court and an “inn”. We ate at the inn because my mother was tired of over crowded food courts. This was definitely the fanciest restaurant we ate during our whole trip. It was so high-brow that they gave us wine glasses to drink our water from. I had a lot of fun with these glasses.

While we were eating, a fife player came through. He was very jovial and chatty.

This was a blacksmith. My mother asked him how many times he had been burned and that inspired him to go on and on about how important safety is when blacksmithing.

The last thing we did was a special “Enslaved persons tour”. We walked all over the place listening to the fellow pictured above talk about slaves at Mount Vernon. I am only including one photo of this part of our visit, because even if I had taken a thousand, they would all basically look the same.