After finishing the wandering round Hirshhorn, it was time to tackle the final museum of the day…the Freer Gallery on the other side of the castle.

The first impression one gets looking at the entrance to the Freer Gallery is that it seems pretty small compared to the other museum facilities along the National Mall and indeed it is. But that appearance is very deceptive indeed because the Arthur M Sackler Gallery is physically connected to the Freer Gallery and most of the exhibit space is actually underground.

So don’t think you’re just going to quickly breeze through the entire collection…the gallery complexes are much larger than they appear and they stretch across several floors.

When Julia and I visited the Freer on a weekend trip, it was an unexpected delight that counterbalanced how disappointing National Air and Space was at the time (which was undergoing another major renovation well before the advent of the Udvar-Házy annex at Dulles and was the only aerospace museum in town).

The Freer/Sackler galleries specialise in Asian art which includes everything from the middle East all the way to Japan.

Particularly moving were the photographs taken during the Islamic revolution in Iran.

But arguably the most stunning exhibit had to be the Tibetian Buddhist Shrine Room. It’s not a particularly large room but it is jam-packed with Buddhist shrines of all shapes and sizes complete with ritual offerings of rice and lotus flowers. The intricate craftsmanship of the wood and metal pieces is simply breathtaking.

Unfortunately the courtyard was closed for renovations (there’s that theme again!) but there was still a ton to see and experience and once again the Freer proved to be the gem laying in plain sight.