After Thanksgiving and a day of visiting friends, it’s back on the road. Leaving Providence, we expect a seven hour journey to Washington DC. What we don’t know is, that everyone else in America is also planning this very same drive on the very same day.  Picture four and five lane motorways, with traffic bumper to bumper. And that’s whether it’s moving at 60 mph or at standstill!! Yes!  Bumper to bumper at 60 mph. Serious stuff!  Much of the time it’s at standstill. It’s late when we arrive, but who cares, tomorrow we’ll go visit the capital.

Washington is a city we’ve all seen on TV and you get certain impressions. Most of them are wrong. Or at least they were in my case. The White House is a beautiful building, but it’s quite small, well smaller than it looks on screen.  Of course you can’t get very close to it, so maybe that’s got something to do with it.

We walk along the mall. The monuments a spectacular. There are truly moving monuments to veterans and casualties of the Great War, World War 2, Korea and Vietnam.  The Lincoln memorial is stunning and far bigger than I expected. We walk on across the bridge over the Potomac river to Arlington cemetery to the Kennedy memorial and the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. At this, we catch the Changing of the Guard. You just have to be impressed. Back across the river and pass the Roosevelt and Jackson monuments, then walk the Mall, all the way to Capital Hill. We have now walked about nine miles, so dinner in the “Dubliner” is a treat.  (Yes I know I shouldn’t go to Irish pubs when I’m away but this came highly recommended by the porter in the railway station). And anyway, it was close and we were starving. In fact, it was quite good.

The next day we decide to do all the museums. Yep.  All of them. We stroll through a Christmas market and in to the Museum of Spies. Actually, it turned out to be just the shop of the Museum of Spies, but enough is enough. Next is the outdoor display of modern sculpture. Well of course, I always considered myself an expert on modern sculpture. OK, maybe not an expert, but I recognised the “Spider”. And the park benches! Well all right, I thought they actually were park benches. They looked like park benches. So it was an art exhibit, so what?  It might have been real.

Into the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. What a fascinating place. I could spend a week there. As it was, we stayed all the rest of the day and only saw half of it. But wow!  What a half. This is a place to go back to. But not this trip.

Next morning, we’re on the road. It’s a damp, cool day, so what do you do?  Drive!  We stay in the car for 600 miles and get to Savannah. Seems like a nice place. We’ll have a better look, tomorrow.