Today was the first day with no real plans – lots of things to do, but nothing put on the schedule. Which meant we faffed around and achieved very little! On the news this morning was a warning that Hurricane Sandy was on its way - the weather was going to remarkably change by Sunday, and the hurricane was due in on Tuesday. Somewhat glad we are shipping out Saturday night! It was definitely more cloudy today, but still was warm enough for a t-shirt only.
We thought we would try the hop-on hop-off bus, and duly picked up a leaflet and set off for the bus stop. We traditionally always do this, and most of the time regret it as we hang around wasting time waiting for buses that go in usually the opposite way we want them to go. Will we ever learn our lesson? Having not even opened the leaflet until we get to the bus stop, we are hit by the price. $45 for one day, $55 for two. That is massive, but we are here now. There is also a combo – buy the night tour as well for $80 total. The bus pulled up, so we had to make a quick decision. I left Paul to negotiate with the bus driver and went upstairs. It was past the next stop before he came up – he had to book the night tour and decided where to get on and he was not pleased he had to make a decision on his own!
We were heading initially for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where they did free tours between 12.30pm and 2.00pm. The bus was going in the right direction – hurrah! We got off, and then spent twenty minutes trying to find the place. In the end we went in the Commerce building and got the security guard to point us in the right direction – which was the opposite way that we went when we got off the bus. We approached the building and the queue was huge – this wasn’t something that you could book, you had to just turn up. So we got in the queue. I spied a hot dog stand the other side of the road, so decided to do the “American” thing and had a chilli dog. It wasn’t as nice as what I had imagined – it tasted just like a hot dog at home and I don’t really like them. Oh well – at least I tried it.
We got in on the last but one tour – there were a lot of people behind us that were turned away. We had a quick DVD on the history of the building and American money – there are two facilities that print money, the other one is in Fort Worth, where we had just come from. Then we had the tour that took us in galleries above where the money is printed. We started by seeing the paper going in and having one layer of print on, then another, and then the serial numbers and the seal and then cut and stacked. It all takes a small amount of time to get stacks of money. If the money is printed in Fort Worth, it has a small FW printed on it. Most of ours we had was printed there. It was a bit like a newspaper printing press – it just kept coming and coming. Apparently all pieces of paper are accounted for, so none can go astray!
We then went outside to the bus stop to wait for a bus. And we waited, and we waited. Then a bus came – that was so full there was standing room only downstairs. I didn’t think it was a good idea to get on that, so we started to walk to another stop. Another bus came along, and that was full as well. Now I was getting cross. We decided to go and get something to eat, and then go back to the hotel for jackets as we had to meet at the White House for the night tour at 5.45pm. We actually ended up at the Elephant & Castle – which turned out to be an English Pub. I had roast beef and bread & butter pudding. Bizarre. We sat outside – it was on Pennsylvania Avenue – when all of a sudden there was no traffic whatsoever on the road and deathly quiet. The waitresses said that President Obama was on his way – the second time today. So, cameras at the ready, we took all the police motor cycles, probably the car Obama was in (who knows), as well as the twenty or so other blacked out cars that was in the line. Oh well, that brightened up the meal!
We then thought we had enough time to walk back to the hotel, and then back again to get the night tour. Wrong. We didn’t get back to the hotel until 5.20pm, and we needed to be back at the White House for 5.45pm. Jackets grabbed, we went down and got in a cab. “To the White House in fifteen minutes please”. I think we must have got the grumpiest taxi driver ever. He asked us if we knew it was rush hour, why had we waited so long, and didn’t English people look at the time. But, he tried his best to get us there, and he did. I don’t know why we hurried – the tour bus was twenty minutes late! I did predict that earlier, but was only joking.
We had a guide called Ralph, and he made up for the semi bad day we had had. He was a lovely guy – and it turns out as a fourteen year old he had been at the Lincoln Memorial when Martin Luther King made his “I have a dream” speech. We went around all of the monuments and he gave us witty stories and information all the way. The whole city was alight with the bright lights on the marble monuments. He told us, at the Lincoln Memorial, that the sculptor had made another face on the top of Lincoln’s head of Robert E Lee, and at night you could see the grim reaper’s shadow at the back of Lincoln. You could certainly see the shadow, although the face looked more like the lion out of the Wizard of Oz. Who knows.
We went to many monuments that we hadn’t already been to – the whole city is built around monuments. I am sure we won’t be able to do them all. One of the famous ones of the Marines at Iwo Jima was in neighbouring Virginia (over just over the bridge) where they were getting ready for one of the biggest marathons in the USA on Sunday. Another good reason to go on Saturday! It was a good tour, and ended the day on a higher note than it started!
No comments:
Post a Comment