Just love when you order a taxi through the hotel and it's 20 minutes late. And even more so when it's a flat fee which is most definitely more expensive than a metered taxi. On my way into Orlando the taxi cost a total of $40 including the airport surcharge and cost of tolls, in a fair amount of traffic. At 5.30am there is no traffic to the airport so it should have been the same price or cheaper. Not happy. Anyhow because the taxi was 20 minutes late, this really threw out my time at the airport. I checked in online but I am using my phone so I have no way of printing my boarding pass. This meant I had to line up in the full service line at the airport which was so slow and then the wait to go through TSA line was 25 minutes. At this point I'd like to mention how ridiculous TSA is for domestic flights in the US. You still have to comply with international standard liquid restrictions, must now your ID and boarding pass, take off your belts, jacket and shoes and scan your bags. Talk about overboard. Anyhow by the time I did all of this - ad trust me I did not dawdle, my name got called out on the speaker to board my flight. This has never happened to me before. So embarrassing! And it wasn't even my fault. Damn taxi, damn Southwest needing a boarding pass to enter the web check in cue and most of all DAMN TSA!!

Um so you know how I said Orlando was cold? Scrap that. Washington DC IS cold. I thought the jumpers and the jacket I had bought would suffice but no they did not. My first afternoon in DC was spent so cold that my skin went kind of red and I felt like I was burning from the wind chill. Not fun at all.

I spent my first afternoon with a hostel provided map and my feet taking me through the National Mall to see all those famous sights. Along this walk I had a realisation that I have a bit of a thing for lamposts. I find myself admiring interesting ones and snapping a photo more often than not. First up on my personal sightseeing tour was the Lincoln Memorial. In my mind I knew it was big, but far out, it's really big! Unlike most of the tourists in there, I took the time to appreciate the whole monument and read each and every word of Lincoln's speech engraved into the walls. I was dismayed to see most people came into the monument, took a picture with Abe, had a quick glance and were out of there without a second look. Then I just walked east along the mall past the reflection pool and WW2 memorial, beside the Washington Monument, which to my dismay is closed due to earthquake damage from 2011 and up to the Capitol building. Then I headed out along Pennsylvania Avenue past the National Archives, FBI, Old Post Office, which is a gorgeous building and over to a building you might have heard of...the White House. By this time the sun was starting to go down and I set off back to the hostel. And more concerning than the impending darkness was the fact that I was really, really, very, very, extremely cold!

Day two started with checking out the breakfast offering. And after the bread and jam of South America, I was so very pleased to find cereal - four varieties, oatmeal, fruit salad, muffins, fruit, multiple spreads - peanut butter, jelly, butter and cream cheese and the holy grail of US breakfast foods, bagels! So naturally I took full advantage of this and had two cream cheese bagels for my breakfast. Sah happy.

Continuing my DIY walking tour, I headed out towards the Tidal Basin. I walked around three quarters of the basin stopping at the Martin Luther King Jnr Memorial, Franklin Roosevelt Memorial and Thomas Jefferson Memorial. All were great but my favourite was definitely the Martin Luther King one. The white marble (at least I think it's marble) were engraved with some of his most famous quotes. Again I was dismayed to see most people stopping to snap a picture and then continuing on their merry way. I mean sure, you saw the MLK Memorial but you didn't SEE it. Next stop was the Holocaust Museum only a short walk from the Jefferson memorial. If you g DC, I highly recommend a visit. Like most DC museums, it's free. The whole premise of the museum is to educate people so such atrocities don't reoccur, which I think is a very noble cause. The main exhibit is set out really well but was super crowded and I think it probably always is. The whole exhibit is sad due to the heavy subject matter but it was interesting and really informative. Waking through an actual train car that transported innocent people to concentration and death camps, past the unsafe three tier bunk beds and through a corridor lined with shoes of victims was chilling.

After that I had originally been planning to head over to Arlington Cemetery but not anticipating how long the walk around the basin would be, I was a little tired. So off to the metro station I went and hopped off close to Georgetown. I was already enjoying DC, thinking it a charming place, but Georgetown is where I fell totally under the spell of DC. Georgetown is modern yet antique all at the same time. I walked along the Potomac past Washington Harbour and Waterfront Park before deciding it was time to find lunch. There is a pretty famous (it's featured on a TLC reality show) cupcake store called Georgetown Cupcake. The store had a cue right up the street and I had to wait 20 minutes just to get in the door. After securing two cupcakes I went to the ridiculous deli cum supermarket Dean & Deluca to get something of actual nutritious value. My pesto, tomato and mozzarella pasta salad would have been good regardless, but tasted even better after the awful salads of South America. Then I finished off my lunch with one cupcake, vanilla birthday cake flavour. I find in Melbourne the cupcakes from the boutique bakeries have excellent frosting but the actual cupcakes are usually dry and disappointing. The ones from Georgetown Cupcake were perfect in every way.

Having quickly found my clothes ineffective in the Washington chill, it was time to shop. Georgetown is the place for this, where can find all of your expected big chain stores and lots of funky little boutiques. I have arrived in the US a month late for the kind of shopping I need to do. Shops are now stocking spring clothing, which is useless to my need for clothes for the current weather. I browsed a few shops either not finding anything useful or finding the shops out of my price range. Heading into Banana Republic I immediately saw two gorgeous coats. I tried both on and there was a clear winner. Looking at the price tag, I was not sure if I would buy the coat as it was a little more expensive than I wanted to pay. However the shopping gods were smiling on me as outerwear was 30% off and so one gorgeous water resistant orange trench coat is now in my possession. And finally I managed to find a pair of jeans that fit me and I like, as well as one very cute dress and a denim jacket.

By this time it was kind of late and I had plans to meet Shoko from Japan for dinner. So I trekked back to the hostel and bumped into Shoko right away. It turns out there was an NBA game on that night that she wanted to go and see, and asked me if I wanted to come along. Hells yes! One shopping dump later and we were off to the Verizon Center, buying our tickets - only $26 and then to find dinner. Cue the most massive slice of pizza I've ever had, and back across the road to the game, Washington Wizards vs Charlotte Bobcats. The whole thing was crazy. It's not just a basketball game, it's a performance. There were fire cannons, cheerleaders who were more like dancers, t-shirt guns, mascots, the burrito dash, a pie eating contest, massive screens encouraging us to cheer and boo. I don't think either team is particularly great because it wasn't a very trilling game, but who can complain for $26?

The next morning after barely making breakfast, Shoko and I were off to the White House. This time I walked around both sides and saw The West Wing as well as taking the obligatory photos round the front.

After this we split up with plans to meet in the late afternoon for some shopping. I headed over the the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. I hit the food exhibit all about how food attitudes and trends have changed from the 1950s to 2000s. My favourite part of this exhibit was about Julia Child and included her real life kitchen. Then it was off to see the original Star Spangled Banner (the US flag if you didn't get the reference). After the flag I hit the American Stories exhibit which houses artifacts and props from real life history and entertainment from the 1700s to now. I saw Dorothy's slippers, Lincoln's pocket watch, Ali's boxing gloves and Elphaba's costume just to name a few things. Pretty cool! Last I went to the American Presidents and First Ladies exhibit. My favourite part of this exhibit was looking at and reading about the inauguration ball gowns of First Ladies, including the stunning Jason Lee dress Michelle Obama wore to the 2009 Inauguration.

After running some errands that are too boring and frustrating to write about, I met up with Shoko. We didn't end up having enough time to shop as there was a hostel trip to the Kennedy Center. The Kennedy Center wants the performing arts to be available to everyone and so they offer a free performance in the lobby every evening. Currently they have an exhibition called Nordic Cool which celebrates and educates on the culture of Scandinavia. The performance was an improvisation featuring four musicians and four performers each controlling a puppet. Honestly the performance was a whole lot of nothing and just over halfway through Shoko and I left along with Greg and Miranda, fellow Melburnians. We took the short walk to Georgetown and looked for somewhere to eat. Finding a relatively inexpensive and nice burger restaurant, we put out names down for a table, which gave us just enough time to visit Urban Outfitters so Greg could buy a jacket. Dinner was excellent. I had an excellent mushroom burger (not as good as Grill'd) and the stock standard burger side, fries. And then just like that my time in DC was over.

My favourite DC sights...
1 Georgetown.
2 Martin Luther King Jnr Memorial.
3 Lincoln Memorial.
4 Holocaust Museum.
5 Old Post Office.
6 Metro Center.