My cousin Jason was good enough to offer to take me on a tour of Washington D.C. today. Fantastic - makes things much easier for me, very much appreicated. Anyhow, we left in the morning at approximately 9am. Young Matty didnät want his father to leave and was calling for him to come back - "Daddy, daddy". He was also holding his shoes and a little hat. Aww... so cute.
Anyhow, onto the journey down. I'm not exactly sure how many kilometers it is down to Washington D.C. but the journey took somewhere between two and two and a half hours. There are several things that I noticed on the waz down, something that I noticed on the way down, something that i've always known - but only really hit me on the road.
Highways are amazing here in the US. Now, i'm not going into any debates about cars plus pollution or the need to promote public transport here. There are highways everzwhere and the interstates are fat. How fat? real fat, in fact some are 8 lane behemoths. Yea. You know that the proverbial has hit the gan if all of the lanes are choc-a-bloc. Furthermore, these interstates are true highways - not the supremely weak midgets that we have in Australia.
The second point I would like to make is that there's a whole lot of people living in the North East of America. I mean New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. aren't all that far away from the eachother - plus between the towns there seems to be a fair bit of so called 'civilisation'. I mean I drive from Sydney to Canberra and see... not much. Best I can think of is Goulburn.
What's to do in Washington D.C.? Well, sightseeing of course. My guess is that all that happens here is politics and not much else. Monuments - yes, museums - yes times two, politics - yes again, anything else - can't tell. Well, driving around a little... one of the first bulidings of note (up close, that is) was the Australian embassy building. What a piece of ... err.. excrement. Here I thought that America and Australia were allies - canät reallz tell that from the building. You have got to see it to believe it. Oh man, we _so_ deserve better. The location may be ok, the interior could be ok (I didn't go inside), but boy - the exterior sucks.
So the first task in D.C. was to find a spot to park. We all chose (Jason, Carmen, I) to visit the White House frst. Parking was a bit of a pain but we eventually found a spot several blocks away from Pennsylvania Ave (as 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is the address of the White House). The reason as to why there was hardly any parking was clear when we get to the White House - many others came to visit the White House as well.
So the White House. We first saw the back of the White House. Nice - but not terribly impressive. Incidentally, the back looks quite similar to the front, just that the back is missing the second floor balcony and the greenery in the foreground is not as impressive or vast as it is in front. The front was obviously much more of a delight, yet it was a little disappointing that I wasn´t able to get a little closer. After a few happy snaps it was time to move on.
Next stop was the Lincoln Memorial. The memorial features in several films, the most notable of which is Forrest Gump (well the view is from the steps of the Memorial looking towards the Monument). We had to venture back to the car and drive closer to the memorial, as it and the White House aren´t exactly close. So up to the trail and up the steps and there he was - Abe Lincoln... surrounded by scaffolding. Great. I travel thousands and thousands of kilometers and all I see is arms and legs. Damn. At least I can read his "Four Score and Twenty Years Ago" speech, so I thought. More scaffolding. Bah! Not my day thus far. Unlucky to the max.
Interstate 92
The White House
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