The day started with an al fresco breakfast on the balcony of the apartment, getting used to the sounds of Washington DC. First stop this morning was right next door - The Newseum - a seven floor museum dedicated to free expression and the five freedoms of the First Amendment to America's Constitution. In good tourist behaviour we followed the suggested advice from the orientation film, which was to start at the top, going up in the glass elevator, and work your way down.
I'm glad there's some glass between me and that drop.
This was lucky as the seventh floor is a terrace overlooking Pennsylvannia Avenue, with an expansive view from the Capitol Building to the White House grounds (the ellipse, where they have the large Christmas tree).
What's this? Why are they closing all the roads? President Obama obviously knew we were in town as he organised for his motorcade to pass beneath us just as we arrived.
What you don't see in this picture is that the last vehicle in the motorcade is an ambulance, which seems something of an indictment of the times we live in.
It's a wonder he goes out very often if he needs to close the streets and have that many people available every time he pops out for coffee and croissant.
From the terrace we can also see the apartment block where we are staying. It's the brown one.
There's so much to see in this museum, the ticket you buy lasts two days. As you would expect there are lots of front page details some going back to the earliest days of printing. We found the one depicting the Gun Powder Plot interesting if a little gruesome, no 9pm watershed in those days!!
They also included a number of physical artefacts from the headline stories, such as;
Bits of the Berlin Wall
the door from the WaterGate break in, and the twisted remains of the antenna from the top of one of the twin towers destroyed in the 9-11 attack.
There was a virtual reality headset to try (but it wasn't very good).
There's a map displaying where there is a free press in the world.
The day is dry and reasonably sunny so we decide that a walk around the tidal basin to Arlington Cemetery and back via the Lincoln Memorial would be a good idea.
En-route we walk through the sculpture garden of the National Gallery of Art
A delightful fountain. We had to prevent Eric form going in for a quick splash.
There are lots of sculptures to see but this one in particular caught our eye
A gaily coloured house to be pictured in front of? But take a look at the next picture taken from the side. Which gives a clue as to why in real life the walls flipped between being the outside and then the inside of the house.
There are several large memorials around the tidal basin (and you can hire pedalos as well). First is the Jefferson Memorial.
Walking on we reach the Potomac River and see two large rib boats that appear to be chasing each other up and down the river. One looks like it has blue lights flashing and there is what looks like a gun mounted on the front. A gentleman with a badge on approaches us and tells us it's just a practice so not to be alarmed. He walks and talks with us pleasantly for a short while before we go our separate ways. Reaching the Memorial Bridge we are unable to see any access to it from the walkway we are on. Asking some passing strangers they tell us that we can't walk across that one but need to go to the next one. A mile further on we reach the next bridge, but looks highly unsuitable for walking. Again ask some nearby passing strangers, who turned out to be from the north of England! They told us we needed to go back to the previous bridge so off we set again. The Memorial Bridge goes across to Arlington Cemetery, which is in Virginia. It has wide pavements and also very busy traffic.
Wander around the cemetery in a contemplative way. There are over 400,000 military personnel and their dependent buried here spread over 612 acres.
Just in case you thought we'd forgotten to do any bird spotting.
Then it's a fairly long walk back to the apartment taking a few pictures as we go - too many to go in here.
Eric gets a bit homesick when we cross the naval memorial site which features a map of theworld.
But perks up with another chance for a splash. That's the National Archives building behind.
