Well today we awoke very late - about 8.45am - to a much warmer, but otherwise unchanged "grotty" unit, all feeling a little better after a good nights sleep but with Mumsie still adamant that she wasn't "spending Xmas in this dump!!!!!!" 
So after breakfast we headed off to the Eastern Market Metro station and went into the downtown part of Washington getting off at McPherson Square and walking a couple of hundred metres to the Homewood Suites on Massachusetts Ave. After a good deal of haggling we managed to negotiate a pretty good price and sent Mumsie and Katie off to see the room, they returned with the news that there were two rooms with an interconnecting door available which suited us perfectly and so a deal was done and we headed back to the "filthy" unit to repack and get the hell out of there!!!!!!!
The new rooms were very nice and after unpacking again we headed off on the Metro again, stopping to book in for dinner at the Westin Hotel just down the road. We had already made a booking at a restaurant in Capitol Hill for a Christmas Eve Dinner but I cancelled it when we moved away!!!
Making full use of our $9 "all day passes" we caught the Metro to The Pentagon to see the 9/11 Memorial there.As it is a partial public holiday here and all the government workers have disappeared, we walked through the vast, empty carpark to the side of the building that the terrorists flew the plane into. The Memorial is very different to most you might see - they have used quite a large area and erected 185 monuments (the number of people killed) consisting of a little rectangle of flowing water covered by a curved platform the same size. These are arranged in rows depicting the ages of those killed starting with a single 3 year old and ending with a single 76 year old! A fence increasing in height (from 3 inches to 76 inches) as the ages of the dead grew borders the Memorial. 
The wall of the Pentagon building has been carefully restored but the newer stone stands out starkly and the huge area crashed in is easy to see.
Just like Ground Zero the place has a weird feel to it, but it is an interesting and different design and very well worth a look if you make it to the Capitol at some time. Memorials are something the Americans do very well!!!!!
From there it was back home to our hotel and a chance to have a beer and relax for a bit before having our Christmas Eve dinner. We had tried to get some Xmas decorations at a shop nearby but they were all sold out and so we had nothing to show it was Xmas as we went to the restaurant for what turned out to be a fantastic meal! The only thing wrong was a lack of atmosphere as the place had only six other people in it!!!!! Oh for the Kahunaville cocktail Bar!!!!!!
As I said the meal was great and the staff very friendly and three of us had beaut steaks while Mumsie had some chicken, while we shared a bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc - no Aussie wine on the list and we had no idea of the local and European plonk!!!
Later we called Marnie and Rach on Skype and wished all at home Christmas greetings, then I did a bit of blogging before hitting the sack. All seems to OK again after the unit issue, Mumsie is smiling again, all is good and we are looking forward greatly to the days left here in Washington DC. Tomorrow, because just about everything is shut, we are going to walk the National Mall and see what we can see.