Renewing Old Friendships

---

You know how it is when you put something precious down and can't remember where it was...& then you find it again ? That feeling of joy when you realise you still have it ?

Well, we headed down to the breakfast to meet up with Nick, Meg and their 13-year old, Noah.

No big deal......except Nick & I shared college years almost 3 decades ago....we had vaguely kept in touch, but life kinda got in the way.

as it often does

So it was over 23 years since we had really exchanged anything. At all. But thanks to the wonder of social networking, I had got in touch with a view to maybe meeting up......and so we did.

& the years rolled right back like they never existed. We caught up over breakfast, then headed straight out to catch the #1 Walking Tour of DC with Tim Stewart - his Monumental sTOURies one.

What a fabulous guide he is: entertaining (plenty of UK-US banter), witty (see the tide mark up the Washington Monument ?), knowledgeable (the history of the Presidents, anyone ?!) and with a great manner: highly recommended to anyone visiting DC!

Unfortunately the heat and hiking of the days leading up finally took their toll, and Ellie needed a rest at the WWII monument. A local volunteer ranger insisted on taking us to their air conditioned booth to rest a while - I think if he had his way she would have been in an ambulance to ER, but we knew she just needed a rest with no fuss !

So we lost touch with The Group: Tim, apologies, we went MIA! (update - have swapped a nice email with him, we will have to get back in the future and complete another tour!!)

Whilst the girls had a rest, the boys hiked up to pay respects to Lincoln & the 'Nam Memorial.

click, click, leave a gap to photoshop them in later!

Once refreshed, we took a gentle hike back past the obelisk and across to the Old Post Office: one of Tim's recommendations, a free trip to the top actually affords a fabulous view over the City - highly recommended. As a bonus, the inside is a beautiful, beautiful old building, and in the basement you find a proper eclectic mix of shops and many independent little cafe's, a great stop for lunch !

From there we took a Ben & Jerry's ice cream to help us make the hike back to the most visited building on the planet - the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. A few of us took a tour about Charles Lindbergh - very entertaining, and a story well told, although a tad long.

A nice exhibit at one end about Airplane Art - photo's taken from the ground looking directly up at many planes. It was noted that amongst the shiny, beautiful craft, Air France was the one looking very dirty. oh, & the Canadian. They speak French there too.....I'm just sayin'.....

The evening was spent hiking past the grand State Capitol up to Union Station to meet Nick & Meg's oldest, David. We headed to Chinatown. A plaque tells us it has the "largest single-span archway in the World"....although my good friend Mr Wiki tells me Liverpool has the largest multi-span one outside China.

As always, we were struggling to decide on a restaurant until a couple of complete strangers saw us loitering and recommended "China Express, just round the corner", which turned out to be a proper authentic cafe-style place with some excellent food.....even if the Tsing Tao was a bit on the not-cold-enough side (unusual for the US !).

A really nice evening....& a final hike back to the Holiday Inn Capitol & one last cheeky beer in the bar to round off a brilliant day.

don't leave it so long next time!

---