Lately the boyfriend and I have been visiting lots of wineries and tasting lots of wine. We have been writing articles for an online news site about our experiences at the wineries and about the wines we have been tasting. This weekend we decided to take a break from the wineries and do some in town activities.

On Saturday we took the metro to the National Gallery Of Art East building in Washington, D.C. to see the Cezanne in Provence exhibit. Paul Cezanne died in 1906. This exhibit marks 2006 as the centenary of his death. The exhibit focuses on the works he painted in and around his native Aix-en-Provence and celebrates the landscape and rich associations it had for him. We took our time and studied each painting. We noticed several had places where the canvas wasn’t touched with paint at all. We noticed many of the buildings were off angle and looked like they were leaning. We aren’t sure if this was on purpose or how they actually looked at the time. Either way, we thoroughly enjoyed the exhibit.

After the Cezanne exhibit we decided to walk across the street to the West building and see the Dada exhibit. I saw a story on the CBS Sunday Morning show last weekend about the exhibit and was interested in seeing it. Dada is a movement of artists who were expressing their feelings of the social climate of the time through their art. This exhibit features paintings, sculpture, photography, film, and collages from many European cities. All of these works were created in the midst of World War I. Once we began to see the works, I did not really care for them at all. The boyfriend liked some of them. I did get a few ideas to try with my photography. I’m probably not describing the art or the movement very well so you can read more about it here.

After Dada, we walked all the way down the mall to the tidal basin and took in the views of the Cherry Blossoms. The peak bloom was Friday so there were literally thousands of other people there to see them as well. Even though I’ve lived in the DC area all my life, this was the first time I’ve seen the blossoms up close. They were beautiful and it was worth the walk.

The boyfriend in front of the cherry blossoms.
We were very tired from walking all over the mall and we still have to walk back to get the metro home. The metro was packed and people were being shoved in the cars like sardines. We decided to bag the metro and take a cab back to where we parked. It was well worth the 15 bucks. We were exhausted.

The boyfriend in the cab.
Even though we were very tired, we really enjoyed taking in the visual sights of the day. The Cezanne exhibit was wonderful, the Dada exhibit left me thinking, and the cherry blossoms were beautiful. We had a wonderful day. We ended the day by going to our favorite wine seller and bought a case of wine. What a wonderful day!