Day 36: Arlington and bus to Philadelphia

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This morning Tom took me to Arlington cemetery, the biggest and most famous military cemetery in the US. It started out as the estate of Robert E Lee, the most famous confederate officer in the civil war. He started out as an officer for the US army, but at the outbreak of war he didn't feel he could fight against his own state of Virginia so he switched sides (epic fail). When Union forces took over the house they were determined that 'the traitor' could never return to his home so they started burying soldiers in the flower garden, and it's spread from there. While we were there we saw a military funeral complete with horse-drawn hearse, trumpet fan far and fighter plane flyover. John F Kenneddy is also buried in Arlington although we didn't have time to see his grave before we had to leave to go to the Greyhound bus station.

This proved incredibly challenging to locate, being on 1st Street (of which there are about 4). So much for the smug, 'logical' grid system. At one point Tom actually stopped in the middle of a crossroads, wound down his window and asked a taxi driver which way to go. We got there eventually though, and with plenty of time to faff in the station. The people there were so rude and unhelpful that I almost started crying: they pointed me the wrong way, sent me to the wrong queue, so by the time I got on the bus I was utterly exhausted.

Anyway, I got to Philadelphia OK and one of my next hosts, Joe Garland, picked me up from the bus station and took me back to their flat. Joe's partner, Philip Haines, did physiology at Balliol (taught by Piers), then preclinical medicine at UCL and clinical school at New College (where he was captain of Osler Boat Club). He's now a cardiology registrar at UPenn, so I won't meet him until tomorrow night as he's on a hideous shift pattern. Joe was really friendly and chatty - he trained at Harvard and is now a consultant in infectious disease and does various clinics around town, including a walk-in clinic for HIV patients. We went to dinner at a local Thai restaurant (Joe is half Thai) and found loads to chat about.

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Photos

JFK's grave
(We didn't actually have time to go there, but this is almost as good)