Now there's a thought ...

Washington.

I doubted the sanity of rising at dawn to pack and find a taxi in order to get an 8.10 train from Pennsylvania station in New York but have to say it was worth the getting up early. Loved the Amtrak. Standard class seats were really comfortable and had free w-fi so the three hours twenty minutes journey flew by. We tipped out in to the Grand Central Station in Washington and were dragged straight into the Yo Sushi on the station concourse by the younger members of the party. This was very popular, being slightly different in menu terms to the UK , and we had a very early lunch and a long conversation with the owner of the franchise who had lived in the UK for several years, so we had a good catch up on transatlantic perceptions of Britain and the States. Made me realise that the positive atmosphere around the Olympics is very different to the downer of the riots almost exactly a year ago.

Checked into the Hotel Rouge which is comfortable although for some reason reminds me of the set of Twin Peaks. Dragged teenagers out to the Lincoln Memorial but they really weren't in the mood for it today so we gave them ten dollars for a taxi and proceeded to do a long walk around the basin, taking in the FDR and Jefferson memorials, both of which are stunning.

This blip comes from the brilliant Roosevelt memorial. Through a series of tableau it tells his and Eleanor's story and the driving ambition to level out the worst excesses of capitalism. No US president can be called socialist, but FDR knew that if you leave a lot of your citizens behind then society as a whole will start to disintegrate; it's not a spectator sport where the impoverished masses get to watch the rich enjoy themselves, serviced from the sidelines by a grumbling middle classes, it has to be something we can all participate in.

Ring a bell? We live in a UK where the wealth and opportunity gap is widening. Post Olympics, Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg please note and consider - will your legacy be like FDR's or like Thatcher's when it comes to creating a fairer society?

Anyway ... by eight O'clock we were being treated to a fantastic sunset. Jefferson's bronzed statue was glowing inside the temple of his memory. The reflections on the Potomac were stunning. Men were casting rods for carp and kids were cartwheeling in the sun's dying rays. We stumbled footsore to a main road and grabbed a taxi back to the hotel where we had some really nice tapas style food and beer / cocktails before falling into bed. The kids had been ordering pizza and watching TV and seemed very happy.

Thank you Washington - good to be back. Very, very good in fact ...