Washington

We spent most of the day driving, finally arriving in a tourist rest area around 4 o'clock where the extremely helpful man gave us several free maps and brochures as well as some info on how to use the metro in Washington which would be substantially cheaper than parking in the centre of town. The rest stop also had free WIFI so we took this opportunity to check our e-mails, have some dinner and upload some blogs from New York. At about 7 we set off for Lucky strike bowling alley where we had heard there was Salsa on Sunday Nights. We arrived to find they were half way through a beginners bachata lesson which we joined to warm up a bit. The lessons turned out to be a joke with no real teaching going on it was simply a case of monkey see, monkey do. The dancing afterwards was a substantial improvement with some good music and a nice mix of salsa, bachata, chacha and even one or two merengues thrown in. The level of the teaching was quickly evident as no-one seemed to have been told about timing, Mae found that the dances did not stay on any beat consistently. There were a few good dancers there, however they kept to themselves and didn't really ask us to dance. The organiser recognised us as I was wearing my (incorrect) NYISC T-Shirt, however he did not seem impressed with Mae's comments when he asked her opinion on the congress!! All in all though we had a fairly good night and stayed almost to the end. (We skipped out before the last song) We then headed back to the rest area to spend the night.