Washington, D.C

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DAY 6/240 - Thursday, July 19, 2007

Today we went on a tour of Washington D.C. Again for the city tour we got a different guide (obviously as she had more knowledge of the area). She was a little easier to understand than the new york tour guide as she had more of an american accent. Washington is like Canberra on steroids - it's whats known as an artificial city, created only to be the capital. As a result its all pretty nice, and well planned etc. However apparently Washington is one of the most dangerous cities in the USA - the lady was saying its more dangerous than new york.

So we visited the arlington cemetary (burial place of JFK and family), then lincoln memorial, jefferson memorial, the whitehouse and Capitol building. The formal part of the tour concluded the Smithsonian - a massive area full of famous museums and art galleries where we were allowed to wander around. After having lunch in the American indian museum, dad and I decided to go to a gigantic shopping mall for shoes, (2 pairs of black shoes for the wedding was in camerons lost bag), a new bag for me (the cheap one dad had gotten me was falling apart), a hair cut and a phone charger for meathead (also in the bag that was lost). Tim you would be horrified to know that this hair cut cost me 30 USD + $3 tip - They did wash my hair, which was the first time thats happened to me at a hair dressers (the lady couldn't work out why i wasn't just relaxing - but it was really hurting my neck). The whole trip to the shops worked out pretty smoothly actually, which was to our suprise given the size of the mall. We got back to the Smithsonian with enough time for a quick look around the Air and Space museum. There they had a piece of moon rock, and other cool things like the actual apollo 11, and the actual spirit of st louis.

On the way back to the hotel some of the group got dropped off at this shopping mall to buy food for dinner etc (there wasn't a lot to eat around our hotel), and since i had forgotten to get a few things earlier at the mall i stopped there too. I ended up spending the entire 2 hours in a pub in the complex and having to run to stop the bus which had just left the car park. Its not as though anyone was really suprised though because i'm pretty sure that someone in our party had held up the bus almost at every stop we'd made (DAMN AUSSIES).

When i got back to the hotel the others were going to dinner - i stayed and drank with 4 dutch guys from eindhoven - ages 15,17,28,29, and an 18 year old aussie from perth. The parents of the 15,17 year olds eventually 'forbid' them from staying any longer (i think that was just the literal translation of a bad english speaker) as they were parranoid that the police would get called and thier underage sons would get arrested. However the 28 and 29 year olds, who had spent the afternoon drinking at the Smithsonian, were up for the long haul. It was pretty funny talking to them - they didn't know a lot of English but they loved coldplay - thats how i knew they were gay. They would both to me "so you do do something other than just sleep", and they were both really upset that we had only decided to do this on the last night that we were there - it really is a good idea to do some sort of team bonding early in the trip - makes the whole thing so much more fun if you're comfortable around one anoter.

The smaller Dutch guy got hell boozed and was falling asleep on his chair, but would occasionally awaken to say "ah du fucker ya" and then fall back asleep. We were drinking till the small hours until the bigger one got naked, and drove away me, Betty (who had stopped for a beer) and the American tour leader girl who kept walking past and the Dutch guys eventually managed to stop for a drink.

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