Thursday 2nd July - Washington

After an uneventful night during which not one person broke into our room or committed mayhem in the neighbourhood, we decided not to be wimps so ventured out on foot to walk to the Metro station, about 10-15 minutes away. This very efficient service whisked us into Union Station where we bought two-day tickets for a hop-on-hop-off bus and did a two hour circuit of the city. Washington is a beautiful place, with a great many parks, lakes, etc. None of the buildings are very high and most are built of white marble in very impressive architectural style. There are also many monuments and statues honouring people or events from America’s past.

In the afternoon, we boarded the bus again and got off at the National Air and Space Museum which had either original or reconstructed models of planes from the earliest days of flight and also many satellites and space rockets.

Apollo II from which Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the moon

We were amazed at the small size of the space capsules that carried men to the moon. They could scarcely have moved in them. It must have been very claustrophobic.

Our next stop was the White House, or as near as we could get to it. We peered through the railings, hoping to get a glimpse of Barack Obama, but he must have been otherwise engaged.


We got safely back to the hotel without being mugged and dined on the remains of last night’s dinner - we purposely bought enough for two nights.