Best night's sleep so far. Didn't get woken up until 8am. Hurrah! Bad news was that I had a dream about bears attacking people outside of school. Turned out one of the bears was a man dressed as a bear. Then just to make it better, lions turned up and started attacking the bears. Interesting start to the day.
Beautiful sunny day. Bought one day metro pass. Metro is very easy to follow, there are 5 lines each called a colour, i.e blue, etc, and then on the map it is marked by a line of that colour. Ingenious. First stop Arlington Cemetery, a military place with thousands of graves. Lots of scout groups everywhere all wearing matching stuff. Dib dib!
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| A very small section |
One particulary famous resident.
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| JFK's final resting place |
Also watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Heat was intense. Felt sorry for the guy who had to march back and forth wearing a full uniform.
Made our way back into the city and stopped by Radio Shack to buy a micro sd card for the sat nav. Next, headed down to the mall to spend the rest of the day seeing the sights.
First stop was the Museum of Natural History. Got worried when I saw the bear and lion exhibits. Brought back bad memories. General impression of the museum was that it was slightly basic in terms of the information. They probably didn't want to make it too difficult for their own people to understand.
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| Bear or man dressed as a bear? |
Then moved onto the Museum of American History. First item we saw was the original star spangled banner that inspired the national anthem. On a bizarre note as we left that exhibit a massive USA flag had been unfurled in the lobby and was being held by a crowd of people who then proceeded to sing the national anthem followed by cheering themselves at the end. Thought that it wouldn't happen back home. Couldn't decide if it was very patriotic or just plain weird. Very disappointed with the museum as a whole, not really anything that interesting in it. For example, there were old violins from Italy even though it was the Museum of American History.
Had lunch in its cafe which was good. Spent a long time people watching, comparing what they bought to body size. You can guess the trend. Was very surprised to see Dan Thomas from the drama group there, or was it?
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| Is it Dan and who is the murderer next to him? |
Next made the long walk to Capitol Hill to see the House of Congress. Told them to sort it out else there'll be trouble.
Then having got bored of walking lots we commandeered a Pedicab.
Made him take us to the other end of the mall. Felt fairly lazy as we sat back and did nothing on the journey.
Managed to walk the last 40 yards ourselves.
Saw the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool.
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| Abe the babe |
Decided to be lazy again so got Tophatman to take us back the other way. Ended up at the Washington Monument. Took arty photo.
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| Pointy |
Next we went to the Air and Space Museum. Best museum of the day by far. Saw the real first ever successful flying plane made by Orville and Keith Harris. Also saw the actual Spirit of St Louis, the first plane to cross the Atlantic Ocean without stopping. Amongst all this stuff we also saw Dr Evil's rocket.
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| Mwahahahahahah!! |
The time now being 7.30pm we decided to eat dinner so we made our way up to Chinatown and went to Ella's Wood Fired Pizza.
http://www.ellaspizza.com/ Excellent grub. Nice people. In and out in 30mins tops.
One last stop to make before heading home, although the guy who lives there wasn't home.
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| Mr President's House |
Finally got in at 9.15pm. Absolutely knackered. Now trying to load USA maps onto sat nav ready for picking up the car tomorrow.
Things we learnt today:
1. Washington is great, much friendlier and cleaner than New York.
2. Ann is a giant in this country. Everybody seems to be shorter than her. I feel like Gigantor.
