We arrived into DC at midday, and after checking into our hotel decided to book onto a city tour.Ironically the best deal was on the 'London' open top bus, so we went all the way to DC to sit on a London bus!The bus collected us from our hotel, then we had a choice of 2 tours, and we could 'hop off hop on' as we liked.We chose to do the main monument tour today, so we could get our bearings.We saw what seemed like hundreds of buildings and monuments, and it was so hot.This was the first day since we arrived into America that we had no rain.(I know, if it had rained I would be complaining about that, but I'm British - moaning about the weather is what we do best!)So, after the tour we decided to walk back to the hotel to go in the pool.We walked through a street market, where they were giving away lots of free samples of fruit and cheese, so we tried some of these and then continued home.The swimming pool was on the roof of the hotel, and was such a welcome relief after a day in the sun.We then stayed up there whilst the sun started to set, as we got a good view of the city.

The next morning we chose which of the monuments and buildings we had seen on the tour yesterday that we wanted to take a better look at.First we walked to the White House, which was near to our hotel and a lot smaller than we were expecting.We then continued to the Washington Memorial, which is the tallest structure in DC.Next we walked to the World War 2 memorial, which has beautiful fountains, and then on to the Lincoln Memorial.We also saw the Vietnam War memorial, which we were particularly interested in as we had seen so much about the war history whilst we were in Vietnam.We then took the tour bus again, as our tickets lasted for 48 hours, and did the other route which took us across the Potomac River to Arlington cemetery and the Pentagon.We just saw the cemetery from the top deck of the bus, but this gave us quite a good view of the hundreds of white gravestones, particularly the field of graves from the Vietnam War.We then saw the Pentagon, and in particular the side where the plane crashed into it on 9/11.It has since been repaired, but the stone work is a slightly different colour to the original.

We got off the tour bus near the Mall and walked to the National Museum of American History.There are many Smithsonian museums in DC, which are all free, but as neither of us knew much about American history, we thought this would be the best one for us to visit.We only had time to see the section on American War history, but in this we learnt about their fight for Independence and the Civil War, which is what we knew little about.It seems so strange that we did not learn about America's fight against the British for Independence at school, but I guess we only really learnt about the battles which we won!We did not get time to see more of this museum, as we had an appointment at the Hart Senate office building.We had been in contact with a lady called Sabrina, through couchsurfing, who could not accommodate us in DC, but did offer to organise a trip to Capitol for us, as she worked at the senate.So, we met at her office and she took us on the senate underground subway from the senate offices into the Capitol building.They have many offices underground, as well as some shops and even a hairdressers!We then watched a film, which told us about the Capitol building and a bit about the political system in USA, then joined a guided tour.In the tour we saw the old and new parts of the building, as the British set fire to it in the 1800's and destroyed much of it.After our tour, Sabrina took us to the House of Representatives and explained to us a bit more about the US system.I can't believe that such a large country has only 2 political parties!

That evening we took the bus tour again, this time to see the monuments at night.This was great, but such an exhausting day.We had planned to spend our final morning at another museum, but decided we had done so much on the previous day, that we would just relax instead, before our long drive to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.So we are on the road now, with a box of Dunkin' Donuts, just driving through Maryland....

Maggie x