Washington DC Weekend

June 21 - 24, 2007
Sponsored by TDF




Washington is full of history, art, theater and more.  If you have never experienced this great city or if you're a frequent visitor, this trip encompasses a taste of it all!  This trip includes accomodations, transportation, admissions to a plethera of museums and performances, daily breakfast, 2 lunches, 2 dinners and a guide throughout.



This June tdf Travel is offering an extended weekend in Washington, DC, where we explore American theatre, art and history in our capitol city.  We visit two of the city's newest memorials, the FDR Memorial and the WWII Memorial on the National Mall. We tour the Kennedy Center where we attend two events, a concert performance of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, performed by Brian Stokes Mitchell and Christine Baranski, both reprising their acclaimed performances in the recent Sondheim Celebration production, and a new play, Mrs. Packard, performed at the Kennedy Center by the excellent McCarter Theatre Company of Princeton, New Jersey.  Our weekend adventure also includes visits to outstanding museums including the Library of Congress, the Phillips Collection, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.  Along the way we survey some of our nation's most outstanding paintings.  Traveling to Washington we stop at Chesapeake Bay for lunch, and returning to New York we visit the remarkable du Pont estate, Winterthur in Delaware, to explore American antiques and decorative arts.   Our hotel is conveniently located within walking distance of capitol attractions, including the Mall and the Smithsonian.   Our journey promises to be a delightful and rewarding summer adventure.






1.  Thursday, June 21     Travel to Washington
This morning we meet our tour escort, Karen Goodman of Carew Travel who accompanies and oversees the tour, near Madison Square Garden, at a location yet to be determined.  We board our private motor coach and depart.  Our first stop is for lunch at Havre de Grace, Maryland, where the Susquehanna River meets Chesapeake Bay, for an authentic Chesapeake Bay experience in the quaint downtown.  The menu is varied but this is an optimum place for delicious crab cakes and crab bisque.    
 
After lunch we continue to Washington, DC where we begin our visit with a tour of two prominent memorials, focusing first on the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial.  Situated on a 7.5-acre site, the memorial depicts the 12 pivotal years of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency through a series of four outdoor gallery rooms.  The rooms feature ten bronze sculptures depicting President Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt and events from the Great Depression and World War II.  The park-like setting includes waterfalls and quiet pools amidst a meandering wall of reddish Dakota granite, where Roosevelt's inspiring words are carved.    
 
We continue to the award winning World War II Memorial.  Located on the National Mall between the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, this memorial honors the 16 million who served during WWII and those who supported the war effort from home.  The memorial features two 43-foot arches, a 17-foot pillar for each state and territory from that period and a field of 4,000 gold stars honoring the more than 400,000 who died.  A series of bronze sculpture panels depict Americans at war, at home and overseas.    
 
After the tour we check into the recently refurbished first class Holiday Inn Capitol, ideally located in the heart of the city, near the Smithsonian and the Mall.  Tonight, we enjoy a welcome dinner, followed by an illuminated night tour of Washington, passing Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and the White House.  (Lunch) (Dinner)  



2.  Friday, June 22     Washington D.C.
We begin with a tour of the Library of Congress, visiting the Thomas Jefferson Building, known for its magnificent 19th Century architecture and decoration and changing historical exhibitions.  The Library's professionally trained docents discuss the history of the Library as well as the art and architecture of this historic building that opened in 1897.  There are a variety of galleries to enjoy, including The Bob Hope Gallery of American Entertainment.  
 
Next we visit the Phillips Collection for a tour of the current exhibit: American Impressionism: Paintings from The Phillips Collection.  Revisiting The Phillips Collection's artistic roots, this exhibition highlights paintings that were among the museum's earliest acquisitions.  Featured artists are Childe Hassam, Ernest Lawson, Maurice Prendergast, Theodore Robinson, Robert Spencer, Augustus Vincent Tack, John Henry Twachtman, and Julian Alden Weir, among others.  As members of the first generation of American painters to absorb the technique, brighter palette, and subject matter of impressionism from their French counterparts, these artists painted atmospheric landscapes, park and beach scenes, urban views, and charming interiors, with particular interest in optical effects, light, and different seasons.  The exhibition shows how American painting around the turn of the 20th century was enriched by the impressionist aesthetic.  
 
After the tour our coach will drop travelers at the newly restored Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, dedicated exclusively to the art and artists of the United States.  All regions, cultures, and traditions are represented in the museum's collections, research resources, exhibitions, and public programs.  The collection features colonial portraits, nineteenth-century landscapes, American impressionism, twentieth-century realism and abstraction, New Deal projects, sculpture, photography, prints and drawings, contemporary crafts and decorative arts, African American art, Latino art, and folk art.  The Smithsonian American Art Museum is the first federal art collection, begun in 1829 with gifts from private collections and art organizations established in the nation's capital before the founding of the Smithsonian in 1846.  The museum has grown steadily to become a center for the study, enjoyment, and preservation of America's cultural heritage.  Today it houses the world's most important American art collection, with artworks in all media spanning more than three centuries.    
 
After dinner on own, we have tickets at the Kennedy Center.  Brian Stokes Mitchell and Christine Baranski star as Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Reunion Concert.  This special concert version, the two Tony Award winners reprise the roles they made their own during the Center's spectacular Sondheim Celebration.  Baranski and Mitchell are joined by a chorus of performers to tell the darkly comic story of the "Demon Barber of Fleet Street." The New York Times said "Mitchell and Baranski are both sublime…chemistry that crackles."  Lunch and dinner are on your own.  (B)  



3.  Saturday, June 23     Kennedy Center
We begin the day with a private tour of the Kennedy Center.  We continue to The Corcoran Gallery of Art, for the exiting exhibit, Modernism: Designing a New World 1914-1939.  This is the largest and most comprehensive exhibition on the subject ever staged, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art is the only American venue.  The exhibition explores the foundation and meaning of Modernism, and it contains some of the most seminal works of modern art, graphic and product design, and architecture produced in the first half of the 20th century.  It traces the historic development of modern form through social, industrial, and political upheavals of the 1920s and 1930s.  It investigates the role of the factory and mass production; the spiritual aspect of modern life; the period's fascination with the healthy body and organic forms found in nature; and national identity.    
 
Our escort brings the group to see more than 150 objects from the historical collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History which are on view at the National Air and Space Museum while American History is closed for renovation.  Representing the breadth of American history, the objects reflect four areas of American experience: Creativity & Innovation, American Biography, National Challenges, and American Identity.  This eclectic and disparate collection gathers such highlighted objects as Dorothy's ruby slippers, Kermit the Frog, Abraham Lincoln's top hat, Lewis and Clark's compass, Custer's buckskin coat, the Greensboro lunch counter, Thomas Jefferson's bible, and Edison's light bulb.    
 
Tonight after our farewell dinner we have tickets for another production at The Kennedy Center where the Fund for New American Plays and McCarter Theatre Company present Mrs. Packard by Emily Mann. Based on the true story of Elizabeth Packard, New Jersey's renowned McCarter Theatre Company performs this fascinating account of one woman's determination to right a system gone terribly wrong.  In 1861, Mrs. Packard's husband, a reverend, has her committed to an asylum after she questions his religious beliefs.  Once there, she meets her charming foe, Dr. McFarland.  Their inevitable clash proves to be surprising and devastating for them both. (B) (D)  



4.  Sunday, June 24     Winterthur
After our daily breakfast, we check out of our hotel and travel by private motorcoach to Delaware and the Brandywine Valley where we visit Winterthur, an American country estate built by the du Pont family.  In the early 20th century, Henry Francis du Pont and his father, Henry Algernon du Pont, designed Winterthur in the spirit of 18th- and19th-century European country houses and it was the former home of H. F. du Pont (1880-1969), an avid and obsessive connoisseur, discerning antiques collector and horticulturist.   Now the world's premier museum of 17th- through 19th-century American antiques and decorative arts, Winterthur's collection is unsurpassed and it is the ideal place to rediscover and explore America's heritage.  We tour the house to see the exquisitely furnished rooms in which du Pont entertained his family and friends in grand country-house style.  In the inspiring architectural surroundings of the Period Rooms, we view magnificent vignettes of antiques celebrating the finest in style and craftsmanship.  A visit to Winterthur immerses us in another time and place as we rediscover America's heritage through its unparalleled collections of antiques and Americana.  After lunch at Winterthur we continue to New York where we anticipate arriving around 5:00pm.  (B) (L)  





This engaging experience includes:

  • Private motorcoach throughout
  • 3 nights at Holiday Inn Capitol Hotel, Washington, DC
  • 2 performance tickets at Kennedy Center
  • Daily breakfast, 2 lunches, 2 dinners
  • Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial
  • World War II Memorial
  • Illuminated night tour of Washington
  • Library of Congress
  • Phillips Collection
  • Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • Tour of Kennedy Center
  • Corcoran Gallery of Art
  • Smithsonian National Museum of American History
  • Visit to Winterthur, the du Pont estate in Delaware
  • Escort throughout tour
PROGRAM PRICES  
Per person (double occupancy) from New York: $1,399.00  
Single Supplement: $325.00