Tour

Today we finished the tour. This included the National Cathedral. Absolutely astounding! This is massive. The 6^th biggest cathedral in the world, it looks centuries old. Oddly, it was built in the 20^th century. It was only finished in the time of Bush Snr.

Sarah got lost at least once in the crypt. That’s cathedral-speak for basement. 

There are chapels everywhere in this thing. There are even elevators to 6 floors of offices and an observation deck on the 7th. One of the best places to see the city and beyond.

The amazing thing is that from the outside, there is no way to tell that these modern things are inside. As I said, it looks like it is centuries old.

Drove through Georgetown. Sarah likes Georgetown. Nice houses. Nice shops. Nice.

There are embassies up the wazoo in this town, and most of them in the same street. This is referred to as embassy row. During the tour, the driver makes your head spin while reciting the list. On our left is …, on or right is …, on our right is …, on our left is …. Yikes! One driver even asks for nationalities onboard before we hit embassy row. He then adds details about those embassies during the “recital”. Impressive. Very Gilbert and Sullivan!

Because we are stranded in the desert of business district Washington, we are stuck with doing dinner at the hotel. So far we have tried both hotel restaurants, and each one is slightly worse than the other. Actually, as we wander around town (the real bits, not the Sahara south of Independence), we cannot believe how many restaurants are closed.

OK, it’s the weekend. I get it. This is a Government town, so is shut down over the weekend. I get that. But, hey, it’s a tourist town too, people! So much opportunity lost. Do you really make so much money during the week that you don’t want any on the weekends? Really?

We found this on our first trip to Amrika in ’02. We went to San Francisco for a few days, and took a day trip to Napa Valley. As you know, this area is world famous for it’s wineries. Cool! We’ve been to Marlborough, where every winery has a really nice restaurant. So off we go, to do lunch in Napa Valley. D’ya think? They don’t do restaurants! They do tastings, but that’s it. Again, maybe they make enough money from the wine sales, not to need the extra squillions they would make by having wanky food to go with their wines. Actually, there was one winery that did the whole restaurant thing, and it was great. Spectacular!

So. Where was I? Restaurants in Washington. Found a place, called Emmett’s Grill. Very nice, and VERY busy. It was probably the only place open for lunch on a Sunday in central Washington. About one block from the White House, so can’t get more central than that, huh?