The third day of our Washington, DC adventure found us starting our day at the Library of Congress.

OK, call me a geek if you like, but Mr. Roaming Boomer could get happily lost for days in the Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with nearly 142 million items on approximately 650 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 32 million books and other print materials, 3 million recordings, 12.5 million photographs, 5.3 million maps, 5.6 million pieces of sheet music and 62 million manuscripts.

I’ll come back in a later post to tell you more of the details of our visit to this fascinating place.

After three hours or so (far too little time), we were off to enjoy lunch at Ben’s Chili Bowl.

Ben’s Chili Bowl is a Washington, DC institution, and as you can see in the picture to the left, a favorite place for President Obama to enjoy a good chili dog.  We also noticed that the inside of the restaurant was loaded with pictures of Bill Cosby enjoying a dog or two himself.

When we approached the little restaurant, we were shocked to see that the line was outside the door and wrapped around the building.

Dismayed at a potential long wait, we learned from seasoned Ben’s fans that we were likely to wait about thirty-minutes. They also assured that the dogs were well worth the wait.

Once inside we ordered Bill Cosby’s Original Chili Half-Smoke.  This is their signature dish originally made famous by Ben’s in 1958 and a favorite of Mr. Cosby’s since the early 60’s.  It consists of  1/4lb. half pork and beef smoked sausage on a warm steamed bun topped with mustard, onions and their spicy homemade chili sauce.

Holy yummy chili dog Batman!  That was GOOD!

Next on our agenda was the National Gallery of Art to view the special exhibit: Gauguin: Maker of Myth.

Again, I will have a separate post on our National Gallery of Art exploration.  But just let me say this, we never, ever go to Washington, DC without a trip to the National Gallery of Art.  It is a very special place and significantly worthy of your visit.

Well, that was our day!  Stay tuned for day #4!