Washington DC - A Scrooge's paradise!

On the road to Washington - what aircraft??!!
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What a town! We haven’t had this many free things to do since we lived in Canberra! Actually Washington reminded me a lot of the ACT in many ways, not just the way in which the city is set out, but also the climate, people and the whole atmosphere of the place. Not as many tourists in our national capital though!

We crammed as much as we could into the two days we had in the capital and managed to see all the main attractions like the White House, US Capitol, the National Mall, Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument.

The Supreme Court
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Emma even got to check out how the Americans do their stuff at the National Archives! It was a very impressive building and obviously a lot bigger than the one back at home. The two biggest drawcards seemed to be the Declaration of Independence (there’s my buddy TJ again!) and the Bill of Rights, which both had long queues to view them (we gave it a miss, well it’s not our history!) but I thought the best piece displayed was a letter from a 12 year old Fidel Castro to President Roosevelt where he asks the President to send him ten American dollars as he has never seen American money before, and advises him of the best place in Cuba to find steel to build ships with! I guess the President didn’t

Washington Cathedral
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send him the ten dollars!

We also saw a lot of other points of interest from the top of the double decker bus that we used to get us around town during our visit. The bus was heaps of fun actually. It had a recorded narration which starred a man who sounded like the guy who does all the voiceovers for movie previews and co-starred an annoying woman who he referred to as ‘the one who must be obeyed’ (I thought he was talking about Emma for a second!). This woman would butt in on his commentary every now again to lay down the law about the dos and don’ts of the bus, eg ‘keeping all body parts inside the vehicle at all times’ and, of course, 'no one is drinking alcohol or smoking’!

Lincoln Memorial - from behind
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If anyone has seen the movie Fargo, she had an accent like the characters in that film. It was funny at first but after hopping on and off the bus a few times it wore a bit thin. She also seemed to have a bit of a problem with the Brits, as whenever the ‘voiceover guy’ was talking about anything to do with wars the Americans have had with the English (eg burning down cities etc) she would interject with ‘those English again!’

We also managed to fit in some ‘alone time’ whilst in Washington. Not that we necessarily needed it, we have done pretty well so far spending 24-7 with each other for almost 3 months (including 3 weeks of me driving!) without coming to blows, but we thought it was a great chance with so many things to see to take some quality time out for ourselves! So we parted ways (with only a few tears) and Emma headed off to the National Art Gallery whilst I ventured into the Natural History Museum to check out the dinosaurs and various other dead animals!

Union Station - so many flags!
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I have to say, it was strange being all by myself for the first time in almost 3 months and time seemed to drag on and on until Em and I met up again… anyway after the hour of alone time it was just like old times and we went to check out the White House before continuing our sightseeing in Georgetown.

Since we were staying in a great B&B we opted to stay in most nights, ordering in and watching one of the thousands of videos that they had on offer at the B&B. The first night we were lucky enough to stumble across Rocky playing on cable (Adrian!!) which Emma had never seen. It seemed appropriate to watch before we head to Philly and run up those famous steps. The next night we decided to continue with the genre of ‘classic movies that Emma has never seen’ and sat ourselves down in front of Taxi Driver starring Robert De Nero. What a movie! I don’t know what we were expecting but it wasn’t that!

The Capitol
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During our stay Emma also managed to possibly eat her second piece of meat in as many weeks. I say possibly because we are still trying to figure out whether it was actually meat that she ate, and not some kind of ‘fake’ meat. Even my discerning carnivore taste buds couldn’t work it out, but it sure looked like meat! It all went down at a famous chili place in Washington called Ben’s Chili Bowl!