Washington DC Day 2
After a run around Capitol hill park (Craig) & a lie in (Tess) we started a great day of sightseeing. Craig had already had an exciting start to his morning as when he ran towards a policeman guarding the Capitol buildings entrance he said stop no further while putting his hand on his gun. Needless to say Craig turned & ran the other way! It was a great view running towards Capitol hill with the sun rising over the top.
We started our sightseeing by walking to look at the White House. Tess was really impressed by it, it actually had more presence than Buckingham Palace – maybe because we see so many movies with it in. Craig asked a policeman whether the president was in residence & his reply was ‘maybe maybe not, what do you want to know for!’ they seem to be quite secuirity concious around here! After Craig told the policeman we were from New Zealand he relaxed & chatted to us in quite a friendly way. We then jumped on an open-topped tour bus, you could hop on & hop off wherever you liked. Tess wanted to go to the zoo rather than a museum or an art gallery (so uncultured!) it was actually free & was great to see a whole lot of different animals than what you get in a zoo at home. The pandas looked almost like someone in a bear suit they were so cute. We ended up coming out of the other end of the zoo & rather than walking all the way back through we (Craig) decided to take a shortcut - it looked much faster on the map & involved walking through a road tunnel. There wasn’t a lot of room on the path between us & the cars but people were very friendly as they kept on tooting at us!
We finally got to our bus pickup point & continued our tour, through Georgetown & Arlington Cemetary before getting off at the Lincoln Memorial. Craig was just staring his ‘I have a dream’ quote & the bus commentary started it at the same time too! The Lincoln Memorial was the protest point for Martin Luther King and also the bit from Forest Gump where he calls out ‘Jenny’ - it was really a huge building just to house a statue of Abraham Lincoln inside. On the way back to the hotel we drove past all the Smithsonian museums and Capitol Hill before going back for a cup of tea & bit of a lie down. Tommorow we get back on the train to go to New York (just a 2.5 hour trip) & start enjoying the big apple.
Thanks to Trev & Kate for doing the inspection of our new property – you’ve now seen more of it than we have! Trust the team at FCR is doing it’s usual stirling job and look forward to seeing everyone when we get back in a couple of weeks – don’t worry Ben we hav’nt forgotten your duty free.
I wonder why they tooted at a couple Kiwi’s walking through a ROAD tunnel!!!!! Craig needed navbitch.
Trevor Watts - March 24, 2009 at 12:12 am
Deh, kiwi ingenuity at it’s best. Maybe we could get a navbitch that connects into Craig’s hat of the day?
Bobbie - March 24, 2009 at 6:42 am
I thought I’d catch up on your blogs…do you think you’ve written enough? Good on you both for going 5000 miles in mobile bedroom. Apparently the Proclaimers drove 500 miles. That wouldn’t get you far in the States. Has Craig made any speeches while he’s been in the States? I hear he does a few witty one liners but not for a general audience.
We just finished watching Hell’s Kitchen (US). It’s not a great advert for the States but hopefully you guys have managed to see the real US and it sounds like you have for sure. Nice people, massive amounts of everything, and you get a sense of why you would never need to go overseas if you were born American.
It’s about time you guys came back though…we’re hungry for that home grown farm produce (little dogs, chickens, whatever). Say Hi to Obama for us and see if you can get a trillion or two prop up the NZ economy / buy the country outright.
Seeya,
Neil
Neil - March 24, 2009 at 7:39 am