AC/DC

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If I was Randy Jackson from American Idol, this is what I would say. "DC, for me it was aiight"
It's only a 4 hour train ride from New York, and the Amtrak trains are perfectly decent over on the East Coast, even if we aren't rolling first class these days. It's definitely an imposing place though, big flags out front of serious buildings with names like "Department Of Homeland Security". I'm sure they'd see the humour if you walked into the lobby with a loudly ticking briefcase for a few laughs though.

One of the main reasons we have come here is because Lindo has a gig at the New Zealand Embassy. We even have a paid for taxi ride up there from the huge Huge European style railway station. Speaking of European style, while looking for the Embassy in the Taxi (he got a bit lost!) the driver told us a couple of interesting things.
Here's my interpretation of it:
Basically, Washington DC was designed by a French architect to be similar to Versailles in France, which is another place we have visited somewhere in the distant past. However, this architect, whose name escaped the taxi driver, was an imperialist, and he was none too happy about the big old revolution in his home country, with the royal family all losing their jobs, not to mention their heads.
Now Versailles has these big, wide and straight avenues leading up to the Palace, so does Paris, as most of you probably know. The only problem with these large capacity avenues is that a conquering army can march right up to the front door without anything to slow them down at all. So our architect, who obviously didn't want the same fate to befall America, added big roundabouts to the avenues in DC, thus potentially slowing the headlong rush of the Revolution. Unfortunately I don't think such countermeasures apply to fully laden airliners, cruise missiles or ICBMs...

Anyway, the gig at the embassy is all on. It's a combination of Friday work drinks and someone's 60th, so the in house bar where it happens is pretty full. It's a captive audience at the beginning, with all our diplomats in the US somewhat of a reserved bunch initially, but once they have a few drinks on board they loosen up and start to enjoy themselves on the outside as well. By the end of the night the whole place is singing along. Excellent, they're all just as human as the rest of us! The only disappointment is that the neighbours on either side of the embassy didn't show up, Lindo invited them, but I guess they had other things they were doing that night. Oh, that's right you probably want to know who they are I guess, just the Clintons and the Cheneys...

We only stayed in Washington two nights, just enough time to have a BBQ, see a few key American icons and catch up with an old friend, Mike, who has been living there for 7 years. If there's one good thing about the brain drain out of New Zealand it's the fact that, if you put your feelers out, you will find a network of people you know, worldwide, and not just in London or Aussie either! The other great thing is that these wonderful expat Kiwis make the best tour guides, and sometimes they'll even let you stay with them.

Our next stop, after an overnight Amtrak ride, is Chicago.

See you there!

Olza

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Photos

Mike Butcher has a real camera
and he also has the best pictures of this gig...

Sarah Wynn-Williams house
Scene of the BBQ

Comments

[Dave]

spot the odd one out ...
... easy, the guy second from the left has a hat. What a weirdo!