Washington DC 1

Our plan was to take the train to Washington – which I wasn’t particularly looking forward to.  On the plus side, it's only 3 hours from New York to Washington D.C. but on the negative side, there is no organization at Pennsylvania station whatsoever.  We arrived an hour early and asked where our train would be leaving from, but no-one would tell us.  That would have been no fun at all for the Sadistic Amtrak employees who prefer to tell you only five bloody minutes in advance where the train is.  At which point - WHOOSH - all the travellers stampede like a herd of cattle for the escalors (and if you've ever seen a herd of cattle on an escalator you'll know what I mean) pushing Sue out of the way (we lost her completely for about 10 minutes).  It was a nightmare, Caro and I couldn't even get a seat despite arriving early.  We spent most of the voyage sitting in the luggage rack, with the result that my arse looked like it had been branded with a waffle iron by the time we arrived in Washington..  
 
Incidentally, we left Pennsylvania Station via track 13b.  I made sure to check this because I wanted to know where Track 29 was, so I could ask someone to give me a shine.  Unfortunately, I never found it.  I'm not even sure there IS a Track 29.  It may just be possible, now that I think about it, that Glenn Miller was on drugs.  I mean, just think about the following lyrics:
 
"Ha ha ha
 Hee hee hee
 Little brown jug how I love thee."
 
I mean, if that isn't a reference to the joys of bong-smoking, I don't know what is.  So there you have it.  Glenn Miller - a huge junkie.  He was probably shooting up even as the Nazis shot him down.
 
Sorry about that.  I have no idea where I was going with those last few paragraphs.  Still, it passed the time nicely on our way to Washington...  And now here we are!!  

We pulled into Union Station, which was one of the most impressive railway stations I've even been in, resembling more of a cathedral than a place where you buy limp sandwiches and try to find a bench that doesn't have chewing gum stuck to the seat.  Caro, Luke, Sue and I all emerged from the station and caught a cab to The Wyndham Center Hotel.  This was one of those hotels designed especially for travelling businessmen and seemed very grand after the slightly seedy Milford Plaza.  Sue and Luke immediately went out in search of food, while Caro and I ordered room service and a movie.  This illustrates the difference in our holiday approaches rather succinctly.
 
After several trial-and-error approaches to holidaying, Caro and I have found that the best move you can make on arrival in a new city is to take a guided tour first.  This will give you a pretty good idea of where you want to be and where you want to avoid.  Therefore, we bought a couple of tickets to the D.C. tour from a shop full of political memorabilia, where I resisted the temptation to buy a "Perot '92" bumper sticker.  The Grayline trolley tours are informative and pretty cheap, you get a bit of background and you can take all the pictures you want, thereby convincing people back home that you've actually covered a lot of ground while on holiday while you were, in fact, sitting on your fat arse.
 
Washington D.C. is an amazing city, though not necessarily in a good way.  The streets are long and wide, and dominated on either side by huge marble buildings.  I'm not talking purely about the ones you know,   such as the White House, with snipers all too visible on the roof.  I'm talking about Post Offices, and Agriculture Buildings.  They all look like Roman temples to the gods of bureaucracy.  I don’t consider myself a snob, but is it really necessary to have Palace serve for the department that deals with Chicken Production and Yearly Wheat Yield Figures?
 
These grand boulevards, dominated at one end to the other by structures like the Washington Memorial to the Capital Building are undoubtedly awe-inspiring.  I'm not even an American, and still felt those patriotic juices flowing, but they are also kind of, well... eerie.  Sue said it best when she commented that it looked like a neutron bomb had gone off in Washington.  Only a really weird sort of neutron bomb that leaves only buildings and tourists standing.  The huge streets are empty apart from tubby teenagers in backward caps, trailing behind parents in shorts.  Oh, and us.  I think that Luke and Sue covered more ground than Caro and I did, but that's because they were still looking for a wooden baseball bat.
 
My god, this quest never seemed to end.  Poor Sue had been dragged the length and breadth of New York, and now it seemed she was destined to go through the same thing in D.C.  Luke was determined to find a bat which had to be a) wooden and b) under $20.
 
In order to achieve this, Sue and Luke took a cab to a neighbourhood which, suspiciously, did not appear on the tourist map.  
 
If it had appeared on the map, it probably would have been shown under writing which said, "Hyre Be Dragons" or something because the taxi driver at first refused to drive them there and then finally relented, although insisting that he would wait at the shop for them.
 
This is the point at which someone should have told Luke, "Give it up!!  Go home!!" but no, that baseball bat was out there somewhere and he was desperate to find it, even if it meant killing Auntie Sue.  Anyway,  they took the Taxi Drive to Hell, and the scenery eventually convinced even Luke that there are some prices just not worth paying for a wooden baseball ball under $20.  The taxi drove back, and Sue lived to shop another day.
 
Meanwhile, Caro and I were still on our trolley, having a pleasant time of it.  Once you get past the monuments of Washington, you enter some extremely pretty territory.  We passed the house where President Steve Cleveland used to live.  Apparently he hated his silly name so much he changed it to Grover Cleveland, which I think shows a bit of a lack of judgement.  I mean, I'm not fond of the name Symon, but you don't see me going around asking you to call me Scooter or Kermit.  From there, we entered Embassy Row, which must have been very exhausting for the poor tour guide as he yelled out, "France!  Burkino Faso!  Cote D'Ivoir!  Israel!  Uganda!  India!  Iceland!  Germany!  Pakistan!  South Africa!  Great Britain!  Ireland!" and so on.  He should really hand out geographical bingo cards beforehand, it would be a great way to make extra cash.
 
Then we entered Georgetown, which is a lovely little suburb of Washington, and the oldest part of the city.  It's a neighbourhood of 18th and 19th century painted wooden houses, where JFK and Henry Kissinger used to live, amongst others.  Caro and I decided to spend a day out there, and it was extremely pleasant, even if it did piss down with rain most of the time.  This brings me to the climate, which is muggy.  Someone once told me that the reason the British decided to make Washington their prime military  base in North America was not due to stategic importance or nearby resources - it being mostly swampland at the time.  No, the reason it was chosen was because of its latitude, which happened to be a couple of degrees over the British Army's agreed line for Tropical Pay.  So now you know - the American Capital is where it is so that Corporal Jones could get a few extra shillings for cigarettes and a night with a local bit of strumpet.