It's been a while but here's our Washington update.

Firstly our plane was delayed by 45 minutes due to a problem with the left wing, which we happened to be sitting on-fun fun fun!! It was an easy journey to our hostel as it was opposite the metro. We are staying in Takoma, in North-East Washington. Hilltop Hostel is really nice, and we were greeted by Donald who showed us to our 8 bed dorm, up the rickityest, narrowest stairs imaginable-always fun with suitcases! The first night we were minding our own business when the power went out due to a huge thunderstorm-oh my god!!

The first day we headed to the capital buildingwhuich was surrounded by police and roof top snipers-very scary! After taking a few photos we visited the Senate Building until a storm appeared out of nowhere!! We ran and took cover in the National Gallery of Arts, a two-building free gallery. We wandered through looking at the Monet, Manet and Boudin paintings, a very cultural afternoon! We headed to the American History Museum, which sounded amazing, only to discover that it is closed till Summer 2008-how rude! We stopped at the Information center, inside the Ronald Reagan Building, where we weere ID'd and searched as we entered-seriously it's a shopping center. That evening we met an English guy called Will, who was headed home the next day, which made us very homesick. The four of us spent the evening chatting and playing cards.

The next day we headed to the Supreme Court before going into the Library of Congress, which as our favourite building. It had mosaic floors and quotes all around the walls. We took so many pictures, which we'll try and get up soon, since we have found free internet eventually! We decided to watch Ocean's 13, in the Union Station cinema, in big leather rocking chairs, heaven and only 3.50!!! After dinner we looked at Washington all lit up at night, it was really pretty.

On friday our first stop was the Holocaust Museum, which was really well set out and had so much information. We then walked to the Jefferson Memorial, which as Sam pointed out looks exactly the same as it does in that Simpsons episode!! We then went to the FDR Memorial, which is a set of four outside rooms, to symbolise 4 different periods while he was in office, there was statues, quotes and waterfalls. We thought it was the best of the memorials we had seen, and definitly the most personal. We then admired the view from the Lincoln Memorial, over the reflecting pool and toward the Washington monument. We then proceeded to visit the Korean's Veteran Memorial, the DC War Memorial and the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, which were all really sad and brought home to us just how young some of the soldiers were when they died. The World War Two Memorial tells us how the US single handedly won the war, that didn't start till Pearl Harbouryou learn something new every day!!! We managed to hide our disgust and swifty headed to the Washington Monument and then the White House, before the National Portrait Gallery.

On Saturday we headed to the Arlington National Cemetrey where we visited the Women's War Memorial as well as the Kennedy Grave sites, both JFK and Bobby and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We got there in time to see the changing of the Guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where Lau nearly collided with the guard heading to the tomb. Entirely accidental of course!! We then walked about 20 miles to the Pentagon, which you are unable to take pictures of or go inside. You could clearly see where it had been rebuilt since 9/11 and they are in the middle of creating a memorial there. We stopped off at the shops in Pentagon City-oops!, before heading back to pack our cases for the trip to New York-how exciting!!!!!