We all jumped into an Uber that drove us to the Space Museum for our 11 o’clock entry. When we arrived we found ourselves queuing for about 100 metres along with all the other 11 am entrants.
The National Air and Space Museum not my choice of attraction to visit if I had the choice. I entered and turned into the area devoted to Wilbur and Orville Wright. This part of the exhibition covered not only the first heavy-than air flight, but also their whole family history back to the first Wright to enter the USA. Reading the descriptions you would think no one else in the world had made any contribution to the development of powered flight.
From the Wrights I bumped into Maggi and we wandered aimlessly around the rest of the exhibition hall looking at the very cramped conditions of the space capsules.
By 12 Maggi and I decided to go to the basement and buy lunch for everyone in the form of 5 sandwiches, a few bags of crisps and two waters. The cost dipped slightly under $100. I stood there amazed and paid up.
The others joined us and ate the poor sandwiches we had paid an enormous amount for. We then walked slowly towards the Capitol.
I had originally booked the Capitol tour for 10 am, but that plan went by the wayside. I rebooked for 2 pm. I needn’t have bothered. When we arrived and picked up our tickets instead of waiting until 2 we joined a tour that started at 1:20 pm.
The tour began with an orientation film. Basically a propaganda movie about the wonderful American constitution and the greatness of the USA. We exited the cinema, received our headphones and met our guide. Initially I suspected that I wouldn’t be able to hear her properly because her voice sounded strained. I thought perhaps she’d been giving the same talk too many times. However after a very short time I became used to and liked her voice.
The pictures below shows mostly what the inside of the Rotunda is like except there seems to be an overabundance of statues. Apparently each of the 50 states has the opportunity to provide a statue to these common areas. We’re not permitted into either the Senate or the House as non-Americans.
The tour took about 90 minutes and the guide entertained us with some detailed stories about the construction and decoration of the Capitol.
When we exited the building the solar eclipse had already begun. We didn’t have a pair of eclipse glasses between us. Sadie became worried about the dangers of looking at the sun which was totally exaggerated. Greg took her home. Maggi talked to a group of naval officers and one of them had a spare pair of glasses. We could now look up in safety.
We caught up with Alex and Carrie who had also been given a pair of glasses. We spent sometime looking up and being amazed by the sight of the sun just peeping out from behind the moon. From where we stood the moon’s maximum coverage of the sun maxed out at 89%. Although the light dimmed somewhat it never became at all dark. Thousands of people sat on the grass with their glasses and at one point a lot of clapping took place. I presumed this meant the moon had hit top spot.
We walked on to the Washington Memorial, passed it and then down to the Second World War memorial. The third memorial came next, Lincoln’s Memorial. By this time I had had enough of memorials. Alex and Carrie walked on around the Vietnam War memorial while we waited for them. We then returned by Uber.
I thought we would eat in, but Greg and Alex insisted we go out. Greg had booked a meal at Flávio’s in Georgetown. I knew this would be another disappointing meal. We walked there and back. I chose veal in breadcrumbs and spaghetti in tomato sauce. We had a bottle of wine and a cocktail. The meal cost us $150, half the bill. My food tasted fine, I think the others were disappointed.
We returned to the BnB and watched the film Scoop on NetFlix. We all enjoyed the story about the Prince Andrew interview on the BBC Newsnight.