Washington DC and that White building!

Well, we caught the train from New York to Washington DC. The funniest part was the captain/ train driver ....whatever you call him! Whenever we were coming to a stop he'd tell you about it in a very funny, sing song, american twang! he had us in stitches! We were sitting in the last row on the last cart, and behind us was a female steward. He would start his sing song recommendations and then make comment about her "its a lovely lively place, but if you're Jane (can't actually remember her name) you probably won't like it....blah blah blah. She was saying, every stop, every day, he does this! hehe

We arrived in DC to rain, rain and some more rain. First disappointment was that the Capitol building was engulfed in scaffold....well, we won't be photographing that then!
We had researched and Jack was desperate to head to the Spy Museum. Lucky it was beside our hotel (Washington Kimpton Hotel) so we headed there and spent more time in the gift shop than the museum!
Dinner was had (you have to try the Shake Shack- awesome fresh burgers and sweet potato chips with the most awesome peanut butter shakes!!!)
and Mick and I decided to go for a walk as i wanted to photograph the White House at night. Amazingly, the sky was a beautiful brown red colour with the clouds so I was super keen. (Let me mention at this point that my backpack with nothing but my camera, lenses and tripods weighs about 10kg and Mick refused to carry it at all- thus i was totally used to it by now)
we followed the map up about 6 blocks and , yes, according to the map, that is it! Away I went, beside it was a beautiful statue of a dude on a horse, can't actually remember who it was, but anyway. So after getting all these pics, i said to Mick that I hadn't realised that the WH bordered a main street. Another look at the map........ummmmmm, ok, that isn't the White House! Hahahaha....we couldn't stop laughing!
so off around the corner and there it was. It was easy to conclude it was the White House. There were guys everywhere, very, very secret guys, wearing T-shirts that said in big white writing "Secret Service". I kinda thought they'd be a little bit more subtle, but hey! We were still giggling about our white building blunder, but you'll be pleased to know that the Treasury Building (next door to the WH) is still a beautiful building!

The next morning (as were were only in DC for 24 hours) i set the alarm and got up t 4.30am to walk to the WW2 Memorial, Korean War Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Memorial (new one) and to photograph the stick thing(Washington Monument) and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. Ok, it was pitch black, pissing down with rain and I was trying to hold an umbrella, carry my backpack and read the freakin map! These areas are huge. It was probably a 4 km walk to the Lincoln Memorial. I made sure to keep looking around me at the park as i was terrified I'd get mugged!
The Lincoln Memorial, sooooooo big and pics will never do it justice. (Americans go in for a lot of big things I've discovered!)...and being the only one there (if you ignore the homeless guy sleeping in there out of the rain that frightened the absolute crap out of me) it was amazingly beautiful. By far the best time to see most of the sights we've seen is sunrise, or before. I then wandered over the the newly opened Martin Luther King Memorial. Beautiful testament to an amazing man. There are all his saying engraved on two walls surrounding his stone monument, and it overlooks a lake, across which is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. Back to the Korean War Memorial which is actually bronze soldiers walking across a field, which is a garden. Beautifully done, and ever so serene.

Few more pics and back to the hotel. Took a few of the hotel foyer and walk down our corridor, as the hotel was a complete block!
Boys were still asleep so after they woke, and i told them it was still bucketing down, we decided to take it easy. We jumped on a hop on/hop off, but as you had to sit inside, you couldn't see a thing, so we jumped off and headed back to the hotel to get ready to head to the airport for our flight to Las Vegas!