Day 26 - Petersburg, VA to Fairfax, VA
A good nights sleep, but woke to find bucketing rain... still, no tornado warnings which was nice :) Actually, it may be sick to say, but both Jen & I had kinda hoped we'd see a tornado... from a distance I mean, but to add a bit of spice to these storms we kept getting caught up in. We did see some funnel clouds at Myrtle Beach, but nothing that touched down or did anything.
We headed towards Washington, DC only to realise thatwe'd I'd left the map in the hotel room d'oh, so we had to turn back and start our journey again.
We were only a couple of hours away from Washington and before long we were following signs to The Pentagon. Whoa. Big building! I'd hate to have to put the hoover 'round that place I can tell you. The Pentagon is in the centre of a triangle formed by three interstates so we tried viewing it from all sides, although I think we only got to see 4 of the 5, as we didn't manage to see the damaged side... unless it's all patched up already.
Next up was a drive across the Potomac where we were met with the sight of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial to our left. We took a right up Independence Avenue to see the Capitol Building. As Jen was driving, I was playing tour host... "To our right, ladies, we have NASA, and coming up on our left we have the National Air & Space Museum..."
We then headed down Pennsylvania Avenue in search of #1600 and what a palaver that was! One-way streets, blocked off roads, security guards, policemen... you name it, it was blocking our way to The White House. There was no way we were going to get anywhere near the damn place. In a last attempt to catch a glimpse, we drove past the Washington Monument and down along Constitution Avenue which runs along the gardens in front of TWH. We could barely see it through the trees in the distance, but we caught a glimpse and took a couple of pictures. Actually our first glimpse was pretty disappointing... it didn't look like it did on TV and was covered in some kind of dark mesh stuff, but we grumbled and took pictures anyway. It was only after we started to move forward to leave, that we spotted the famous balcony part duh. What we'd been taking pictures of was the west wing offices *rolls eyes*
The next thing we wanted to see was the Lincoln Memorial, but we wanted to view it from 17th street, looking up to it from the far end of the Reflecting Pool in West Potomac Park, but again, as was the theme for the day, no such luck. The entire area was fenced off, although we did manage to catch a quick glimpse of it up at the top end, before leaving DC via Arlington National Cemetery.
The next move was to find somewhere to stay the night so we rang
Jill, who we were meeting for dinner that night, to find out what area she lived in, so that we could stay somewhere nearby. When we finally got hold of her, she was just on her way home from work so said she'd meet up with us right then. We met up with her in Fair Lakes and had a gorgeous dinner at Logan's Roadhouse before all heading off together around a few shops to find some packing supplies as Jen wanted to mail some stuff home. We still hadn't booked into a hotel at this point, so Jill pulled out her coupon book [watch out,
Cindy! You have a rival!] and called a couple of places to get the best possible rate for us which was really cool.
After finding somewhere and getting the car unloaded, we headed off to Denny's in search of some key lime pie. Whilst there, we had a rather amusing server whose name escapes me now, but who turned out to be Afghani... the revelation of which made Shan choke on her pop and Jen's head spin 'round like that chick in The Exorcist. Why this was so funny is inexplicable now, but I knew that I couldn't make eye contact with either of them if I had any chance at all of keeping a straight face. Poor Jill just looked confused at the weird Brits... bless her. We had a good laugh and a good gossip and never did manage to track down some key lime pie heh.
Back at the hotel room we continued chatting until almost midnight when Jill sadly had to leave us as she had to be at work the next morning :( A bloody good night with a really lovely girl :)
We headed towards Washington, DC only to realise that
We were only a couple of hours away from Washington and before long we were following signs to The Pentagon. Whoa. Big building! I'd hate to have to put the hoover 'round that place I can tell you. The Pentagon is in the centre of a triangle formed by three interstates so we tried viewing it from all sides, although I think we only got to see 4 of the 5, as we didn't manage to see the damaged side... unless it's all patched up already.
Next up was a drive across the Potomac where we were met with the sight of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial to our left. We took a right up Independence Avenue to see the Capitol Building. As Jen was driving, I was playing tour host... "To our right, ladies, we have NASA, and coming up on our left we have the National Air & Space Museum..."
We then headed down Pennsylvania Avenue in search of #1600 and what a palaver that was! One-way streets, blocked off roads, security guards, policemen... you name it, it was blocking our way to The White House. There was no way we were going to get anywhere near the damn place. In a last attempt to catch a glimpse, we drove past the Washington Monument and down along Constitution Avenue which runs along the gardens in front of TWH. We could barely see it through the trees in the distance, but we caught a glimpse and took a couple of pictures. Actually our first glimpse was pretty disappointing... it didn't look like it did on TV and was covered in some kind of dark mesh stuff, but we grumbled and took pictures anyway. It was only after we started to move forward to leave, that we spotted the famous balcony part duh. What we'd been taking pictures of was the west wing offices *rolls eyes*
The next thing we wanted to see was the Lincoln Memorial, but we wanted to view it from 17th street, looking up to it from the far end of the Reflecting Pool in West Potomac Park, but again, as was the theme for the day, no such luck. The entire area was fenced off, although we did manage to catch a quick glimpse of it up at the top end, before leaving DC via Arlington National Cemetery.
The next move was to find somewhere to stay the night so we rang


After finding somewhere and getting the car unloaded, we headed off to Denny's in search of some key lime pie. Whilst there, we had a rather amusing server whose name escapes me now, but who turned out to be Afghani... the revelation of which made Shan choke on her pop and Jen's head spin 'round like that chick in The Exorcist. Why this was so funny is inexplicable now, but I knew that I couldn't make eye contact with either of them if I had any chance at all of keeping a straight face. Poor Jill just looked confused at the weird Brits... bless her. We had a good laugh and a good gossip and never did manage to track down some key lime pie heh.
Back at the hotel room we continued chatting until almost midnight when Jill sadly had to leave us as she had to be at work the next morning :( A bloody good night with a really lovely girl :)