the tale of Hamster's trip to Washington (no, the other Washington). The successful global despot should always take an interest in his foreign service, so I decided to pop in on the embassy for an inspection, and take in a few sights, of course. In my previous post, I mentioned I picked up some brilliant summer reading at the Library of Congress. As some may know, armed forces from a certain nation which shall go unnamed torched the place in the early 19
th century. This, of course, required building all new:
This building, the first of what are now three, is right across from the capitol (which
aforementioned forces also turned to toast a while back).
The interior has been recently restored, and it is delicious:
Many lovely details,
(yes, that's mosaic in the arch, not painting)
the wall paintings are Pompeian 2
nd and 3rd style (
Kel or Duncan, correct me if I'm wrong),
even though the
architectural inspiration looks rather
Hadrianic,
and the main reading room looks positively
Hagia Sophia:
I swear this is where Harry
Weese, the architect for Metro, got the inspiration for the design of the underground stations:
And you can never tell what kind of DC power brokers might be hanging around, researching or trying to find a good read for the train...
