Well, we met up with the boys for breakfast. There were about twelve of us in all and the chosen diner managed admirably - although I'm not so sure that the other guests having breakfast nearby enjoyed some of the explicit conversations quite as much as the participants. Food was good though and in a feeble attempt to eat a balanced breakfast I ended up nearly busting a gut with half a grapefruit, Belgian waffles and an omlette - any two of which would have filled me up.
After breakfast we hopped onto the Metro at Dupont Circle. The Washington Metro has got to one of the few attractive structures to come out of the Seventies. As you would expect it's all concrete, but it is still attractive and well designed - and somewhat reminiscent of the better Jubilee Line stations in London. The lighting is entirely diffused - you can't see a light source unless you go looking for it. Very well done.
We found our way to the Air & Space museum (part of the Smithsonian complex on the Mall) and Gerry began guiding us around. He'd never been here before, but he knew so much about the Space Program I'm sure they would have offered him a job. It was my second time there, but even so I still found it pretty amazing to stand beside the Apollo capsule, see how small and amazingly basic it is and realise that three men spent two weeks in that space.
After Gerry's tour, we wandered around some of the other exhibits. I had it in my head that they had a cross-section of a Boeing 747 that you could walk around, but it turns out they don't which was a little disappointing, as it's my favourite plane. We did have a go in a full motion flight simulator though, which was fun - albeit a bit basic. (It was MS Flight Simulator 2000 where you were supposed to be shooting down tanks. The instruments on the panel seemed a little redundant. I would rather it had been a commercial jetliner that you had to land or something along those lines that would have required a bit of skill!)
Over ate at lunch too.
After lunch I spent a while reading the paper while Brett and the others wandered around the Modern Art section of the National Gallery. There was an intersting editorial noting that President Bush is trying to re-align his reasons for going to war in light of the recent critical report and the lack of any hint of Weapons of Mass Destruction. He's now saying that going into Iraq was worth it to make America safer. The columnist pointed out that while they were doing this, they were busy failing to capture Osama Bin Laden who, other officials recently announced, was likely to be performing some new outrage around election time. It was observed that the columnist didn't feel any more safe now that Saddam Hussein had been toppled.
Anyway enough political commentary. We wandered up towards Union Station after that and almost got caught in a tropical rain storm, but we took shelter under the overhang of some office building just at the bottom of Capitol Hill and let it pass.
Union station is an impressive building, although probably not quite as impressive as the one in New York. It too is now mostly a shopping mall though and that was the main reason for our going. I'd forgotten to bring any spare memory cards for my camera, or the device that would let me download pictures from the one I have. We were looking for a new downloader that would actually sit inside my laptop, so I wouldn't have to keep remembering to take the thing. No joy, so we went to the movies instead. Shrek 2 is just as good as I'd heard, so if you enjoyed the first one, you'll enjoy the sequel.
We’d had a seafood restaurant recommended to us for dinner so we went along. At first we felt a bit underdressed, in our tourist shorts, especially as we were preceded into the restaurant by a couple of ladies in the care of the US Secret Service and the restaurant looked to be full of smart suits. However we had a late booking and the political-looking crowd thinned as time went by and there were more polo shirts in evidence. Anyway we had good food and wine along with Ping, Phil Brecht and John Barton (choristers all) before heading home and collapsing into bed.
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