Washington day two

Dead tired so we can't be arsed to write much on here tonight. Another fine day. Washington was packed with school kids today which made the museums a nightmare. Enjoyed the Air and Space Museum (the most visited museum in the world apparently) except the horrible food-court run by McDonalds. The Capitol building was probably the most impressive in DC and there's plenty of photos of that as proof. Got tired late in the afternoon, especially Dave's foot although you would never have heard him complain, so we went to see Spiderman 3. Really enjoyed it and the American audience participation really added to it especially the woman who shouted jeeeasus-ahh! throughout. Links to new photos below as ususal.

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Day one - Washington DC

First proper day in the USA. Managed to get some sleep last night. Straight to bed ignoring the asian-americans having a laptop convention and the group of lads drinking out the back decking area. We both haven’t the energy for socialising and with this bunch even if we did I doubt we’d bother, too young, too American and we’re here on business. Tourist business. The hostel is fine, basic and could do with a lick of paint here and there but it’s clean. Up bright and early and had a decent breakfast round the corner and then onto the Metro. Struggled with the ticket machine in the station until a guy in full US military uniform rescued us. He may have been the most compassionate soldier ever given that Chris had spotted him helping a little girl across the road just minutes before. Once on board the metro took us into the centre of DC, as it’s called round here, in a few minutes. We disembarked at Union Station. Very impressive place, massive, big and huge in equal quantities. Loads of shops and cheap places to eat. Hopped onto a tour bus that deposited us at all the big tourist sites round the city. Made it to the presidential memorials, the Korean and Vietnam war memorials and round Arlington cemetery. We caught brief glimpses of the Capitol and the White House which we’ll probably go and see properly tomorrow. Before midday we were the youngest people on any of the tours by about half a century. After that a load of local school kids surfaced, on outings to ‘our (sic) nation’s capital.’ As far as we could see they spent their time making chalk rubbings of the Vietnam memorial and playing American football by the Lincoln memorial. It was an excellent days sight-seeing but well tiring. Tomorrow we’re off to have a browse of the museums, mostly of the Smithsonian institute – Natural History, Air and Space and American Indian. Promises to be a day of dinosaur bones, early aircraft and buffalo burgers (a native American staple which apparently they serve at the food court of the American Indian Museum). A nerds dream.

We’ve uploaded our photos to picasa web albums again. They’re a bit mixed up because the time on our camera’s wasn’t set correctly. The link to the latest photos is below. If you’d like to leave a comment on a particular picture I believe you can do it with the Add Comment link on the photo’s page.

Seeing the things to see in Washington DC

Heathrow and beyond (on the plane)

Here we are leavin on a jet plane, don’t know when we’ll be back again…well next year of course! Lovely clear day so you can see the coast of Ireland really clearly, well the east coast anyway, we got too high or it got too cloudy get a good picture of the west coast. Dougal, the madman, was causing all sorts of ruckus on the plane but we fed him some whiskey and he went off to sleep. Last photo is of us watchin’ latest episode of Heroes on the laptop, the in-flight entertainment was good but amazingly we’d seen all the films already. You can click these photos for higher resolution versions!

First day travelling with a new companion

Few photos of the first day of the adventure. After setting off from sunny Derry at 6:30am made it to Belfast City, now George Best Airport and then onwards to Heathrow. We picked up a stray passenger on the way. A young fellow calling himself Dougall Fitzgerald.

Something to remember Chris by..

...as if he'd forget. We spent a bit of time on our last afternoon putting together a massive, possibly life-size, possibly even bigger!! poster of wee Ciaran and his auntie Christ. Here's a few pcitures of the magic.

Cacks and Ratzy's house on the last night

The five of us Derry wans landed up to Cahir and Ronan's bachelor pad for a couple of beers. Cahir had obviously poured all his creative energies into this masterpiece.

Photos from the last weekend

Here's a link to loads of photos that Chris took on our last nights out in Derry. Some gems in there and plenty of drunken heads. Was gonna put some favourites on here but by 'eck there all so emotive it was just too hard. Instead here's a link to the whole lotta them:

Gallery of photos from last weekend on Picasa Web Albums