Washington Day Trip

Trip Start Jul 04, 2012

Trip End Aug 03, 2012

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Flag of United States Washington DC, District of Columbia
Monday, July 9, 2012

We were up and cracking at 6am to get the bus to Washington DC. Four hours there, through New York, Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, five hours in the Capital, then four hours back to NY. We knew this trip would be short but didn't want to come all the way to the USA and not visit the Capital, when we weren't too far away.
The itinerary for the day saw us visit;
- Washington Memorial
- Vietnam War Memorial
- Korean War Memorial (incredible tribute to the soldiers of this war, moving through the jungles of Korea and made mention of the Aussies as well)
- Lincoln Memorial
- White House (no sighting of Michelle weeding the front garden)
- Capital Building (as the flag was raised the parliament was sitting, but no wave from Obama, just lots of FBI)
- Air and Space museum smithsonian (impressive array of actual planes and space craft)
- Madame Tusauds (Tiger Woods needed Flynn's help to line up his putt, Manny spent some time on the moon with Neil Armstrong and Justine shared a moment with Oprah)

Lincoln Memorial

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Washington did feel like a big Canberra to us, with it's perfectly planned and designed layout. The memorials were particulary special to see and were a wonderful tribute to those lost their lives defending the USA and it Allies. The Americans are very patriotic and really make a big deal of their war veterans (and police and fire fighters).

This was a particularly enjoyable day, although under time pressure for most of the day, the visit allowed us to see so much of the Capital in a short amount of time.

When we arrived back in Manhattan we decided to check out Times Square at night, we had been there basically everyday, but hadn't walked around the area at night. What an awesome place it is at night. Here it was Monday night at about 10 and the massive crowd was still shopping, still buzzing, still gazing at the ever changing and sensational billboard advertisements and simply inhaling in the atmosphere! It certainly is a busy place, but New York as a whole, wasn't as hectic as expected and we felt very safe to walk around at night and travel the subway.

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