New York, New York: Washington DC

In mid-October we took off to Washington DC for the weekend. I had Friday off work because the church needed to use the building for a conference. So we organized a dog sitter for Colby and purchased return bus tickets for only $35 each. The bus left from Chinatown, just down from us about 8 minutes (we had 8 minutes to get there when we left the apartment!)
The bus trip took about 5 hours and I got really frustrated with the people behind us. They were annoying American spoilt snoots who like had like so many like problems with like family and friends! At one point I was about to crack and only just managed to pull out my MP3 player and headphones in time!
We were amazed by how similar Washington DC was to Canberra. There were all the parliament buildings and war memorials, museums and art galleries. And then, there wasn't much else. It wasn't easy to get food like it is in New York.
It was cool to see all the famous buildings and to wander through the Smithsonian which is a stack of museums etc that are free to get into. It's like Disney for the thinking person!
We got to see the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. They had faded quite a lot, but I enjoyed looking at the signatures.
We also rocked up at the Pentagon just to say we'd been there (you can't do tours). As it so happened, there was an Air Force Open Day thing that was in the huge carpark. Most people there had tickets, but somehow we slipped through and wandered around looking at all the aircraft. We even got some photos of the Pentagon in the background (usually they don't let you photograph it).
We really enjoyed catching up with Trin, Angus and their kids Amy and Luke. It was fun to be part of a family for the weekend. We even had pancakes for breakfast on Sunday morning!
As great as it was to see Washington DC, it felt really good to come home to NYC. There's just something about this place that we LOVE!