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Published: June 15th 2010
Washington Monument
The Washington Monument by night reflected the pool at the Lincoln Memorial.On Friday afternoon we set off from the madness that was Manhattan in our rented compact car (an ugly Kia thing that was far from compact) and struggled for an our just to get off the island. The journey slowly got better as we drove south through New Jersey, skirted round Baltimore in Maryland and through the countyside into Washington DC. I had ingeniously put 18th Street South East in the Sat Nav rather than 18th Street North West and we ended up in what I can only describe as "the ghetto", not the most favourable place for two white kids to be at 9 O'clock on a Friday night!! Rachel took over the driving and successfully guided us to the safety of the Washington International Students Centre. After the luxury of the Hyatt in Toronto, Darina's apartment and the room in New York, we certainly hit the backpacking trail with a bump! Our room was spartan to say the least with a double bed and a table, along with a bathroom we shared with what seemed like evertone else in Washington!! Friday evening was a light meal and bed ready for a very busy weekend.
Saturday morning dawned absolutely
boiling!! It was over 80 degrees when we left the hostel at 11am. We took the bus downtown and had a look at the White House. I am fairly sure Barack Obama (or Bazza as Rach has taken to call him) waved at us from one of the windows!! The White House is a lot smaller than expected and unfortunately for us, we could not go into the White House, apparently we would have had to apply through our Embassy and join a three month waiting list. We are not prepared to make a detour from New Zealand in September just to look round the pokey little White House! After the political grandiose of the White House we thought we would take in another cultural delight, the football. USA vs England. In the capital of America. Gulp. But it doesn't matter, the Yanks hate football, we could watch the game quietly and enjoy a comfortable England win right?? Wrong on all counts unfortunately!!
Bedecked in our wedding present from mikey, we headed down to Dupont Circle where there were loads of bars showing the game and a couple of big screens in a park. It was absolutely rammed and
the atmosphere was great, the bars were too full for us to get in so we went a stood in the park and got a few funny looks and plenty of friendly banter about our attire. The park went very quiet after Gerrard's goal apart from us few English people. After half an hour of the game we decided to head back to the hostel and the bar next door. We couldn't really see the screen and the digital temperature display showed 96 degrees! We arrived at the bar just in time to see Rob Green's horror display! (sorry Fabio, but that is what happens when you pick West Ham players!) After the football, and plenty of mickey taking from the locals (you'd have think they won the thing the way they were behaving) we went for an unusual dinner. We ate at an Ethiopian restaurant near the hostel. It was very strange, the table was a basket with a cover on and the meal came as a large circular bread with various meat and vegetable stews on top and more bread to eat with. No cutlery just hands and bread. The bread was pretty close to being North Staffs
The Minority
In enemy territory Oatcakes, who'd have thought that Stoke and Adis Ababa had been twinned!? I loved the meal, very earthy spices and really unusual, Rachel wasnt so keen!
Sunday morning was equally as hot as Saturday so we slapped on the sunscreen and jumped in the car ready to do a whirlwind tour of Washington's various sites and monuments. We first headed out to Arlington National Cemetery where many of America's illuminated dignataries, presidents and thousands of servicemen have been laid to rest. There are over 340,000 graves at Arlington and it was truly sobering to walk around and see row after row of plain white headstones as far as the eye can see. It certainly makes war and conflict seem very pointless, especially if you try and visualise that each of the headstones was a person! We saw the grave of JFK and his wife Jacqui as well as the original Arlington Manor House (which houses the tomb of its most famous owner, Robert Lee, a name we have come across before!) We also watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier which represents the unknown dead US soldiers from all conflicts including the civil
war, the world wars and Vietnam. We also visited the Iwo Jima Memorial, very distinctive and very impressive and a drive by tour of the Pentagon,very dull and very boring! After a lovely New Orleans style dinner and freshening up we took the bus down to the National Mall. It was just turning (thank goodness as it made the temperature more suitable to the walking we were doing). We started by walking to the Washington Monument (huge) from where we could see the Capitol Building (grand) and then walked down towards the Lincoln Memorial (passing the WW2 memorial and fountains) and walked along the Reflection Pool (made famous, at least in Rachel's mind, by the scene in Forrest Gump where Jenny recognises Forrest giving a speech!) We resisted the temptation to repeat this scene and spent some time at the Lincoln Memorial, which was truly grand lit up at night and a great way to end our brief tour of Washington.
We left Washington this morning (14th June) on a mini road trip, we have to be in New York at 1.30pm on Friday to drop the car off and get our flight to Las Vegas. We have driven
Gravestones
Thousands of gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery east of Washington today to some islands on the Atlantic Coast, tomorrow to Atlantic City, Wednesday in Philidelphia and Thursday in New Jersey and Princeton. We will update you when we can on those adventures bit for now, goodbye. We hope you are enjoying the blogs and thanks for all the comments and messages.
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Audrey
non-member comment
OMG!!!!
You're afraid with nothing !!! I imagine you when GREEN scored the goal against himself !!!