Day five or my adventure dawns and I rise out of my bed - hungover for some reason - to a hammering on my motel room door. Both Diane & Frank are up and feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to march around the Nations Capital, take in the sights, visit the White House and steal the Declaration of Independence... sorry, no wait. That was Nicholas Cage. I receive a text from Diane informing me that they are breaking their fast in the motel dining area and I am advised to join them presently, so I perform my morning ablutions & smoke my first cigarette of the day, then head off - still slightly fuzzy - for some scram & coffee.
The all American Breakfast. All you can shovel into your overused mush in one sitting. Cereal, toast (warm bread) but no marmite, fruit salad, fruit juice, coffee, English tea, make your own waffles, pancakes, jam, marmalade... I am not totally surprised that the USA has the highest proportion of obesity in the world given the vast amount of food they consume and the general unhealthiness of the food available. The dichotomy of the USA still amazes me; one the one hand there is the health conscious, image conscious seek for perfection portrayed by the media where no-one is ugly; on the other there is the reality of the vast number of fast food restaurants, huge portions, greasy food, and a fat & ugly populace brought up on a diet of burgers, franks & pizza; there is the image of nation as the most powerful and advance in Western Society, yet most of the population are so poorly educated they could not find their bums with both hands and a map; the idea of the Great American Dream were a man can achieve anything and will rise up through merit, but unless you can trace your heritage back to the Mayflower or your great-grandparents made their money in cotton, slaves, oil or molasses you can never rise all the way to the top - but more of that discussion later after we have had a look around the city.
Our journey from the State of Virginia to the District of Colombia is fraught as we hit the end of rush hour traffic but Diane's trusty Sat-Nav does her proud and we end up just a few blocks north west of the White House in an underground car park that offers excellent rates of only one of Frank's testicles as a down payment on parking the car there until 6:00pm. The sun is out, the sky is blue and it is hot already and only 10:30am (ish) with the forecast for it to get hotter... rapturous joy! It is at this point that Diane hits us with another one of her brilliant ideas - a segway tour of Washington DC. Digging out the ever present Blackberry (iPhones are far cooler) over a Starbucks & restroom break she Googles segway tours of Washington and after one false start (yes ma'am. We offer 3 tours a day. You can find us at... We have no places available today) we find a two-hour tour of the capital (i.e. the main bits, not the whole city) with the aptly named Segs In The City and book in for 2:00pm.
We have a few hours to kill before then so decided to wander over to the Spy Museum but that has a huge queue full of school children so we give it a miss and as Diane commented, she can always come back at later date, I won't be able to. We wander around for a few blocks looking at the buildings and trying to stay in the shade as it is getting hotter by the day. We turn a corner and there is the FBI Building - Mulder & Scully are in the basement - sitting in the middle of the city like a huge toilet wall, very reminiscent of the Arndale Centre in Manchester as it was before the bombing by the IRA. On each comer there is a FBI Police shed containing at least two armed officers who are extremely polite but very vigilant in the duty, we snap off a few photographs and I notice that we are being watched intently by the guards on the nearest corner so, as nonchalantly as possible, I walk over to them and ask if I can have my picture taken with the two of them in front of the FBI Building. Unfortunately they refuse, stating it was not possible, however they are still very polite and we quickly make an exit around the corner of the block. Here is the front entrance and Diane snaps of a couple of quick shots with me stood on the side of the road and a backdrop of the building and some FBI Police cars.
A quick sprint across the road and we end up and the Federal Triangle - a series of roads that contain all the government offices in one area - at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue which is, as you may know, the most famous street in America. We wander past the old Post Office, the Ronald Regan Building and cross the road to approach the White House.
Now that sounds easier than it actually was. To get to the White House you had to negotiate a busy road, dodge the CMOT Dibblers selling tourist tat, wind your way through a series of concrete barriers, pass as nonchalantly as possible the heavily armed police officers, negotiate more concrete barriers & gates, pass the Marines and then you can see - in the far distance - the familiar facade of the White House behind a heavy metal fence and quite possible marksman hiding in the bushes just in case you managed to smuggle an RPG in your bag.
Built between 1792 & 1800 from a design by James Hoban and expanded on the orders of George Washington because it originally did not seem a palatial as befitting the President of the Americas. The first encumbered was John Adams in 1801 and it was burned down by the British in 1814 and had to be rebuilt. It has housed all but one of the Presidents since then.
Again, the familiarity of the building itself is quite scare although I am used to seeing it either with a huge alien spacecraft hovering above it or decimated by a tidal wave or even in ruins as Jenny Agutter and Michael York try to find Sanctuary. It was difficult to get any decent photographs from the railings as half of Washington DC had descended on this particular position - and why not as it is a representation & the official domicile of the President of the United States - but did they have to keep walking into shot or just knock your arm when you've set up the perfectly framed photograph? There isn't really that much to see from this angle of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue so we decided to make our way down to the Washington Monument and have a look at that instead.
Following a quick rest stop whilst Frank replenished his blood sugar we made are way across Memorial Park and up the hill to the Washington Monument. With its raised elevation and central location the impressive obelisk stands 555ft & 5 1/8 inches with a capping of aluminum at its tip. It was originally conceived as a monument in 1848 when work began but was not finished to due financial constraints & the American Civil War until 1884, this led to different marble being used above 150ft and the shading is clearly visible. When finished it was the highest structure in the world but soon surpassed by the Eiffel Tower in 1889. The obelisk is a hell of a lot larger than it looks from the Lincoln Memorial and from the raised elevation you see the actual distance from the Reflecting Pool and the brilliance of the architects vision which makes the optical illusion from the view of the Lincoln Memorial even more impressive.
Again, happy snapping time and - to my surprise - I meet a couple from Manchester... but not England, apparently there is a Manchester in New Hampshire. After stopping and chatting we head back into the Federal Triangle, have a quick bite to eat in a mall and arrive at Segs in the City for our whistle stop tour of the capital on segways.
And now for something completely different.
After a brief demonstration from our Aussie guide and tour operator - including many near misses and potential prat falls - we headed off on what was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Segways are a two-wheeled electrical self-balancing propulsion vehicles introduced in 2001 and use gyroscopes, motors and computer chips to balance & move the vehicle. We leaned forward to go forward, back to slow down & stop, and then leaned left or right according to which direction we wanted to turn, they are almost telepathic! The four of us (including the tour guide) whizzed through the pedestrians at a startling 5 - 10 mph on the pavements and used the disabled ramp access on street crossings to cross intersections. It was one of the most enjoyable ways to travel I had found to date.
The tour was expansive, taking in Department of the Treasury, the National Archives, the Media Museums & Canadian Embassy and on up to Constitutional Hill and the Capital Building. All the while our Aussie tour guide giving us the history of the buildings and firing questions at us - if we wanted to stop for a few minutes & chat about certain buildings or their contents he was quite content to let us ramble on. He was funny and informative and even I knew (guessed) some the answers, however the name of President who appointed the first woman to a cabinet post was a wild stab in the dark at FDR. We posed for photographs outside the Capital Building (see the photo) and whizzed around the grounds, receiving more and more information from the seemingly bottomless pit of trivia our guide possessed.
From Capitol Hill we followed the path of the offices for the members of Congress and Senate, passed the Supreme Court - and stopped here for a discussion on the current debates of the overturning of Rowe -v- Wade (i.e. a woman's right to chose abortion) and the death penalty as Cruel & Unusual Punishment. We then moved on back behind Capitol Hill and on to the front entrance to the White House, much to the Diane's joy as we had a view of the West Wing (the adminstration buildings in the White House) and home to the Oval Office - which was a surprise to me because I though the Oval Office was situated in the White House itself - and posed for more photos and a quick video.
After a little more chat we headed back, sunburned and sore from standing on the segways for over a couple of hours. After a brief rest stop to rehydrate, we head back to the car - dissect Frank to pay for the parking and drive into Georgetown for a bite to eat before the journey home...
... and we don't get stuck on Dupont Circle unlike Annette Benning in American President (a cultural reference for our female readers there). We find a lovely little French Bistro in Georgetown, refresh ourselves and then begin the long ride back to Carmel, NY, eventually getting home about 2:00am and falling into bed.
Another hectic day of adventure.
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