NEW YORK - WASHINGTON DC

Day 211 still...
Washington DC

From Manhatten we travelled south to Washington through New Jersey where we picked up 8 more people, making our tour group 20. The driver didn"t have the faintest idea where to go and was relying on the poor tour guide to find our way!

Honestly, she was so frazzled i think she had a mild panic attack. which I'm pretty sure made her more dottery and senseless than she was before the muddle up!

We were happy not to be thinking about all this but the rest of the group were protesting wildly!

There were 2 Italians, 2 Londoners, 2 South Africans, 2 Singaporeans and the rest from American states joined the group.

2 Aussie women (real charachers called Gail and Lynne) we met from Sydney complained about the microphone not working so we did a detour off to the beaen track to what the guide called "real America" (back blocks of New Jersey!) to meet another bus with a decent microphone!

Greg and I thought it was quite adventurous!

In Washington we called in to the Air and Space Museum which had displays on the story of Flight.

We saw Skylab and Apollo 11 command module Columbia, that carried home the astronauts from the first landing on the moon...

And we saw the SpaceShip One, the first privately built, piloted vehicle to reach space, and we learned about the history of the Spirit of St Louis (where Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight).

All really fascinating! Greg was riveted! Pity we didn"t have more time, but you know what tours are like! They do have their downfalls, timewise.
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The monuments that were really fascinating were the Washington, Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson Memorials. All separate memorials, and ll individual and large proud inscriptions on walls dedicated to them.

TheAmericans are so patriotic and really honour their presidents! Each of these particular memorials have HUGE statues of Lincoln and Jeffereson!

We thought of Martin Luther King and his Freedom speech as we stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial...

We also paid homage to the Korean and Vietnam memorials (and our Australians) and then...off to the White House!

This was so well secured. The Ditzy guide said it wasn't usually like that but the UN were sitting last week and important visitors were expected!

The White House was behind a HUGE fence and outside were so many police, protestors and people!

Getting anywhere in Washington was HARDWORK!

It's not the streets that are a worry, tit's the people everywhere! And she said it wasn't busy!

About the streets and buildings....
it's so much like Canberra with the wide streets, sculpured buildings with clean lines....except the buildings are all white and neoclassical architecture.Quite beautiful really.

We had to drop a guy off at the central Washington DC train station...and ohlala what a station. Beautiful. Something to proudly show dignitories aroond the world! Even the doors swung open automatically!

But I was glad when the bus veered out of there, far from the maddning crowd to our LUXURIOUS Crown Plaza Washinon DC Hotel! We ordered room service (About the only place where we"ve been able to, thank god for tours, esp in US where they do everything so well!!)

Day 2 of our tour tomorrow and we're off to New Jersey after a day at the Arlington National Cemetery and the American Indian Natinal Museum!.