Washington

We have been pretty busy since we arrived here in the US and I am going to try to remember everything so here goes…

We flew around 7.5 hours from Heathrow to Washington. Mini monkey was pretty good on the flight and quickly made friends with several other small children and played nicely in the aisles. We had a fairly bumpy landing which made me turn white and quite literally grab the sick bag just in case and mini monkey throw her arms up in the air and shout weeee… typical. The weather in DC was hot, even in the evening when we arrived. The hotel was lovely and in a great location – thanks Embassy. That night we just went for some food and then crashed out in our room, we were all shattered and jetlagged.
We spent the first full day walking, walking and walking some more. We got sunburnt (not mini monkey), blistered feet (again not mini monkey) and bitten pretty mercilessly by the mosquitoes (all of us but especially me). We loved Washington; it is great; grand and green. However I was surprised at how small and relatively unimpressive the white house is in comparison to its neighbours. In fact when we first saw it daddy monkey and I spent some time discussing firstly if it was actually the white house and then if it might in fact be the side view we were looking at (as we busily turned the map round and round and did lots of frowning); but it wasn’t, it was the front. I think my favourite place was definitely the Lincoln Memorial and the wonderful view across the reflecting pool to the obelisk.



































We then headed to the Smithsonian museum area via a variety of other monuments and landmarks, and had a look in the air and space museum and the museum of the Native American. If we had more time and did not have a small and easily bored child we could easily have spent several days looking at all of the museums, there were a mass of them and they are all free and really excellent.

Day two we decided to get a day pass for the metro and head to a few specific locations like the Arlington Cemetery, The Pentagon, and the Library of Congress etc again a long and tiring day. We decided to get off the metro one stop before the cemetery and walk down to it but as we got up into the station it wasn’t obvious which way we should go so we asked the ticket lady who looked at me as though I was stupid and told me that to get there ‘ya’ll need to head on all back down and ged’n the blue line for one more stop’ I explained again that I had chosen to get off here and wanted to walk; with the same expression on her face she said ‘but why, why ya’ll wanna walk’ I explained, she said ‘no, ‘arl tell ya what ya’ll wanna do, ya wanna get back on the metro, ‘arm not een sure it’s possible to walk tut cemetery from here’ I finally convinced her to give me directions and she walked away muttering and shaking her head. About 7 minutes later we arrived at the cemetery, on foot, and I can now confirm that yes, it is possible to walk there from the metro station.

We were totally amazed and impressed by the sheer scale of everything over here. They are such a patriotic nation and have invested such thought, effort and money into commemorating every single conflict they have been involved in and every president who has ever been. Even the walls of the metro contained quotes and references, every spare inch of space has a memorial of some type and I think I respect their attitude and outlook in these matters. Overall we had a fantastic weekend in Washington and I would definitely like to go back at some point and visit all of the museums and institutes we didn’t manage to see. However by the time we got on the plane to St Louis we were exhausted and very stressed, more on that in the next instalment.

(I'll have mine to go please)