A Capitol Adventure!

For those of you who know Simon, you’ll understand his excitement at arriving in Washington. His fascination with US politics, you may ask? His obsession with Night At The Museum and Spiderman? No!!! Everything is FREE to visit in Washington, which is hopefully doing wonders for his spreadsheet as we are nearing the end of our trip!

This has to be one of the best cities in the US that we have visited. No skyscrapers (you can actually see the sky!), big open spaces and great places to eat, plus a pretty luxurious AirBnb (dishwasher, aircon & an icemaker in the fridge!) What more could a girl ask for?

The Smithsonians are all free to visit (did I mention that?!!) thanks to a British man who left all of his money to his nephew, as long as the nephew had kids. His nephew, however, was busy off doing other things (?!) and so his legacy went to build some pretty impressive museums and a fantastic zoo! Probably the one and only time that we will get to see Giant Pandas, Simon & I were more than excited! Plus we got to see a 6 week old baby gorilla (but the photo was rubbish!) And Barnaby found out that he isn’t as tall as a Narwhal’s tusk!!

We also spent a day at the capitol building, where we got a guided tour of the Rotunda (fancy dome thing) and even got to sit in the House of Representatives (no photos allowed), although the visitors outnumbered the politicians – I think they were all off practising for the annual Republicans v Democrats baseball game that they had last night! We visited the Library of Congress (with the beautiful ceilings and mosaics) and I managed to drag them all around the Botanic Gardens, with the stunning orchids (& welcome aircon!)

Finally we went to the International Spy Museum (we had to pay to get in there!). Alice bravely did a bit of acting, they both had a go at deciphering messages with the Enigma machine and we learnt about ingenious ways to hide transmittors in various kinds of logs! There were some interesting things in the gift shop too!

We’ve got 2 more days here, so we’re off for tea with Trump tomorrow…………..