After an amazing nights sleep in our King sized bed (poor James on the sofa bed) we started the day slowly. It was our intention to get up at the crack of dawn but no…. After showers we headed down to Le Pain Quotidien (French café) for brekky. We all had omelettes, coffee and tea for myself.

It was a glorious day, warm and sunny. We had decided to jump on the Yellow hop-on-hop off busses. If you are ever in DC these are the way to travel. $40 for 48 hours, you could jump on and off at any of the stops and also included a boat cruise (more to come on that harrowing experience later). The yellow line ran thru Georgetown and the Cathedral tour. Lucky for us there was a stop on Dupont circle so we hopped on. After dodging many low hanging branches we were in Georgetown. If you can imagine Woollahra on steroids…. Lovely town with shops from nick nacks to larger chain stores like GAP and A&F, of all the places we have seen this trip we both agreed that this town was the closest fit to us. How ever we would need to sell the girls into the SE Asian slave trade to buy a house…

The bus stopped on the edge of the Mall (park) and we walked across to the Natural History Museum. It was packed. We commenced our scrum forward to the Dinosaurs. While they were all very interesting, up close and personal, I didn’t get into it. You seem to get quite blasé about them after a while – oh look – there are some more old bones…. Arhhhh… I kept myself interested by looking for all the dinos and animals from the movie Iceage. This kept me busy for a good 20 minutes.

Following the Dinos we wandered thru the Ocean area and then to lunch in the overpriced “cafeteria”. A turkey roll later we search out the Hope Diamond. The Hope Diamond is 45 carats of deep blue diamond. It is blue to the naked eye because of trace amounts of boron within its crystal structure. It is famous for supposedly being cursed, and it has a long recorded history with few gaps in which it changed hands numerous times on its way from India to France to England and to the United States. It has been described as the “most famous diamond in the world” and, after the Mona Lisa, it is the second most-visited artwork in the world. It came to France from India in the early 1600’s, so an pretty old rock.

There were also other gemstones and famous pieces of jewellery on display – very pretty! After the hope diamond we headed off to walk around the White House.

Walking down the Mall towards the Washington Monument, James decided to walk on the grass at the base of the stone behemoth even though it was obviously closed and “out of bounds”. After one photo he was chased off by a police man. To the copper dismay MANY people had followed suit on the other side of the monument and the police man then had the real shits…

We wandered to the White house an took some photos on the south lawn. Once again we got moved on by the local constabulary. “This area is Closed” – we did however get a few good shots in. It is a very impressive building and you can see how other countries heads of state can feel intimidated entering the place.

Walking around the WEST WING to the other side of the White House you get a much closer and upfront view. Few protesters and what not but all in all an impressive building.

Rather than jump on the bus again we decided, to Bels dismay, to walk back to the hotel. On and guess what!!! ???? James bed was packed away! Seriously….. We got changed and had a few beers at The Dupont Bar before heading out to eat at Circa. Nice place, around the corner. Prices were $25-sh for a main. The killer is not being BYO! The grog costs the bomb when you are drinking liberally. We had a waiter that must have had a silver spoon well and truly shoved up his clacker. He was so pretentious it was ridiculous. At one stage he reached to get a plate and said “excuse me for the reach” – of coarse I said “your welcome for the reach”. This gent also had a little shadow, a new guy learning the ropes. As the night wore on we tended to gravitate to this new guy as he had some personality and if your paying 20% in tips you want to have some fun. We were boring and all had the New York strip steak – was the best piece of meat I have had here so far.

Well the night started to get rowdy and Bel decided to head off home early, im sure to hog the huge king sized bed, whilst James and I stayed to knock off another bottle of pinot and really annoy the locals. After about 15 minutes (it could have been more I don’t remember!!) a girl at the table beside us turned and asked us if “we were together”! Now im in a merry state I don’t quite recall my reply or the intention / inference of the question. Needless to say James and I spent the next half an hour taking the piss out of her, she was “quite annoying” as James put it. We got bored and headed for home. However on the way we did get distracted calling people “LADIES!!!!!” (if you know little Britain you will get it) and then took a personal guided tour of the Washington Metro (subway) – basically wandered down the longest escalator I have ever seen and wandered around.

Eventually got home (I think it was 2am) Bel was asleep and took me 20 seconds to be off with the pixies too.


Posted from New York, New York, United States.