In retailiation of all the Cirque du Soleil shows and theatre and opera that I am dragging Mr K to, I am obligated to attend two hockey games and one basketball game (so far)… though in truth it might be retailiation for my dragging him to Monster Trucks for shits and giggles. Who knows?!

First thing I noticed about when we turned up to see the Washington Capitals play the Vancouver Canucks at the Verizon centre, is that the floor was not as sticky as the Pennsacola Bay Centre where we saw the Monster Truck rally, and I quite distinctly recall thinking that this alone is a good sign of the civilized entertainments that were surely to come. 😛

As Mr K was leading us to our seats, I was suprised as we entered and kept going down, down, closer and closer to the ice. We had great seats in Row E, and he had chosen the end where ‘our team’, the Vancouver Canucks, would be ‘shooting to’, twice (I don’t know, something to do with three periods thing). I know we had great seats, mostly thanks to the very loud and very obnoxious commentry from the guy behind us who spent a goodly portion of the first period talking about how great his tickets were, and the remaining two periods casting aspersions in the general direction of the Canucks, and what I am assuming passes for encouragement at the Capitals. Anyway, given we were sitting in front of this fine specimen of a hocky fan, I guess ours seats were even better than his. We were able to see right into the Washington Capitals bench (I mistakenly called it a dugout for some reason, and yes, I received an appropriate stare of disbelief and derision from Mr K for that one), and got a great view of the players facial expressions everytime someone got smucked into the glass barriers right in front of us. Very edifying, indeed.

So the game starts, and my primary observation is that everything moves so quickly that it is difficult to keep up with where the puck is. It’s quite hard to track even though it’s right in front of you and once a few players are scrimmaging over the damn thing, there are sticks and skates in there and you can lose track of it really quickly, and next thing you know – the puck flies all the way down the other end of the ice, and you can’t see it at all and you end up looking skywards to see where it ended up on the monitors or hoping for a replay to see what actually happened.

Something else I noticed was how quiet it is – we were behind the glass and you couldn’t hear what or if the players were yellin at each other. I mean at a football game or basketball game you can usually hear the coach and players yelling at each other as they attempt to run plays and navigate the field, but I couldn’t tell if the players were communicating out there at all. You assume they are, but the action seems to move with weirdly little noise. That is until the commentators feel the place is too quiet and they start revving up the crowd by literally telling them to ‘Make some noise’. I assume this is for the benefit of the home team so they know the crowd is behind them. A noise meter appears on the big screen and we discover the ambient noise is already around 76db and when they finally get them chanting and screamin it hits between 95-103db.

Naturally the crowd was only cheering for the local team, the Washington Capitals, and from what I can tell, they only have one player – some guy who wears the team number 8, and goes by the name of Ovechekin… because about 80-90% of the crowd wearing Capitals colours ALL had this guys jersey on. It was a rare person wearing any other number. But no pressure, mate.

I also noticed that the home team appeared to have a cheerleading squad, though they didn’t get out in front of the crowd, and they didn’t exactly do any ummm… cheerleading. They mostly seemed to be on the big screen talking to important old dudes during pauses in the game and occasionally wandering around with a bald eagle mascot throwing Chick-Fil-A burgers to the crowd! Very different from what I assumed most cheerleaders did. But whatever floats their boat.

And other than that, I can tell you the Zamboni guys were not very methodical in the manner in which they dressed/cleaned/whatevered the ice – they were a bit all over the place. And did I mention this game is stupidly fast? Cos that’s all I got! I got no idea how it works, no idea what the penalties were for, and only a vague idea of what a Power Play is (something to do with guys being sent to the Sin Bin). It was fun though. The Caps scored first, but the Canucks had leveled by the end of the first period, then at some point the Caps pulled ahead and then it was 3 all for a bit which had everyone very excited as there was not much time remaining. Then you should have seen the crowd go mad when the Capitals scored to make the score 4-3… I thought they might settle down for a bit then, but it seems everyone was then worried the Canucks would score once more and send the game into overtime, and they very nearly did. The Canucks had more attempts at goal and appeared to have more possession of the game (I’m not sure that is something they pay attention to) but just seemed unable to get past the Capitals defence. For the record, I think the goalies are fucking crazy, throwing themselves in front of them things when they are flying so fast.

And yea verily my ice hockey game cherry was popp’d! 😀
We have another game to go to next week – New Jersey Devils vs the Toronto Maple Leafs, and I am really hoping the Maple Leafs win, mostly for the extreme schadenfreude that I anticipate would result should such an occurrence come to pass!

Big day planned. We were supposed to do the monuments yesterday, but with the weather set for a maximum of 2C and an apparent temperature somewhere around -11C, we decided to put it off. Wise move it would seem. Today was headed for a high of 14C and much less wind chilly stuff.

We set off by bus heading for the back side of the White House to start off our walking tour, but somehow got on the wrong bus and ended up near the National Archives instead. Nevermind, we could walk up to the White House from there, so off we went. Bit chilly but no where near as bad as yesterday so all good. Noticed there is a Starbucks on nearly every corner so felt obliged to pop in for a B&B (beverage and bagel) to prepare ourselves for the day.

We ended up on the South Lawn of the White House first which, quite frankly looked like it could use a bit of watering. The distance at which visitors are kept away from the building these days renders it somewhat unimpressive. It is impossible to do a tour here now if you are foreign. You have to be someone or know someone to get near the place. You see, a visiting US citizen can apply to their Congressman to get a pass to do a White House tour, but a visiting foreign national needs to apply through the State Department with endorsement from their nation’s ambassador (in our case, Mr Kim Beasley). So you go to the White House website, and it refers you to the State Dept website, which refers you to your own Embassy’s website which tells you they can’t be fucked applying on your behalf. So, meh. No touring the White House for us Aussies… doesn’t matter, last I heard the place was pretty trashed by Channing Tatum and a bunch of wanna be terrorists during Jamie Foxx’s administration anyway.

From there we strolled past a never ending line of souvenir vans and hot dog vendors to go to check out the World War II memorial, which is a very impressive marble and cast bronze space memorializing all the states that participated in the engagements in the Atlantic and the Pacific. Oddly, there is no mention of the allied troops that fought in WWII, that museum is in New Orleans, not in the nation’s capital?!



There are some distinct upsides to travelling at this time of year – hardly any tourists so it is easier to take your photograph without being surrounded by people shouting ‘Daaad! Go stand next to Chris!’ and much less struggle involved in getting pics with fewer other visitors in them. The downside seems to be that all the lovely water features, fountains and reflection pools are empty because, well, they’d fucking freeze up. We walked past a leaking tap on our way from the WWII memorial beside an empty reflection pool, and saw this on the grass…
So no pretty reflections for us. Still, a lovely walk down the tree lined avenue towards the Lincoln Memorial, punctuated by very adventurous squirrels was had.


I think the Lincoln Memorial may well be one of the most impressive edifices (well, you pluralise ‘edifice’, without making something sounding like educated poo particles!), I have ever seen – and having travelled extensively through Europe, that is really saying something. It stands alone in an elevated position, a towering and commanding building with a majestic outlook towards the Washington Monument (one which would probably be even more spectacular were the reflection pool full!). Steps lead up to the oversized statue of Lincoln giving the visitor a sense of height and lofty elevation – preparing them for the grand ideals contained inside. It is extremely well designed.



Again the lack of tourists were on our side and we were able to get photographs of the statue without random strangers cluttering up our photos which is always a bonus in my book. The vista out over the Mall I can imagine is very impressive when the reflection pool is full. It seems they have been doing quite a bit of restoration since the earthquake that hit near Washington in 2011, the Washington Monument itself has been unaccessible to visitors since then and is half under scaffolding as they rehabilitate the monument and the reflection pool appears to have undergone and entire resealing and an installation of a filtration system due to works needed since the earthquake as well.

Our next stops were right nearby, being the Vietnam War memorial and the Korean War Memorials. The Vietnam War is famous for it’s long straight panels of black granite, engraved with over 58,000 names of soldiers whose lives were claimed by that conflict. It is a simple, elegant and unpretentious memorial to those who perished there and hauntingly reflects your own face and the faces of those around you when you look closely to read the names of those lost, due to the high mirror finish on the granite. There is one lonely American flag flying nearby and no pomp or undue ceremony, it is particularly sombre and rightly so.

The Korean War Memorial on the other hand is literally far more figurative showing men traversing through terrain with their packs, rifles, radios and equipment looking fearful yet determined as they trudge in formation upwards towards…? I am not sure? the enemy? victory? history? They have direction and purpose, but the intent is a little unclear as they are facing a flag and flanked by a wall engraved with faces.

After this we went across the street to the relatively new Martin Luther King Jnr memorial, which from the street side looked like a large white granite mountain cleaved down the middle. On the other side of it, carved into the granite was a statue of MLK himself looking stately and larger than life overlooking the Tidal Basin. It was not far from here at the Lincoln Memorial that he gave his famous ‘I had a dream…’ speech at the Million Man March. Either side of the white granite boulders were more granite panels engraved with famous quotes made in speeches around the country.

Across the Tidal Basin, you could see the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in the distance, this was going to be our final stop in our tour of the monuments today, and we were headed past the Franklin D Roosevelt Memorial to get to it. The Roosevelt monument was no where near as grand as the Lincoln Memorial or the Jefferson Memorial, but it rather suited what we know of Roosevelt. He was concerned with the common man, with abolishing poverty, with rights for workers, and attempted to encompass all citizens. The monument was sprawling and meandered through large granite blocks interspersed with large bronze statues of regular people doing every day things. It was humbling to read the words and ideals of Roosevelt and easy to feel that these ideals have been left behind in the modern political arena.

Further around the Tidal Basin is the Jefferson Memorial, which was built to commemorate Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, and by all accounts one of the most thoroughly well educated men I’ve ever heard of – books and knowledge were his passions and he spent the vast majority of his life reading and acquiring knowledge of science, history, philosophy and all good things. The memorial sits on man-made basin that connects to the Potomac and is an imposing marble rotunda that houses a gigantic bronze likeness of Jefferson himself. I can imagine the walk around these monuments will be absolutely gorgeous in about a months time when the Cherry Blossom Festival is in full swing and all the trees in the area are in flower – at the moment, the trees are all bare and the wind coming off the river is cutting.

And there endeth our Day of Monuments… not because we were out of monuments, for there were many still to see, but rather because I was totally out of steam. Was so glad we had held over doing the monuments for the warmer weather.

Started off our tour of Washington DC this morning by putting on four layers of clothing, beanies, scarves and stepping outside with extreme trepidatioin- Forecast -1C… feels like -11C thanks to 45kph winds. OMG. Swift change of plans from outdoor touring of the monuments to indoor touring of the Capitol buildings.

So we hit the US Capitol Visiting Building where the US House of Representatives and US Senate have met for more than two centureies (yep! I was fucking paying attention even if none of the school kids were). We started off our tour there with a wonderfully presented, and might I say hideously idealistic, video outlining how American democracy works… or rather, how it is supposed to work. It is pretty powerful and amazing stuff, in theory, though the film failed to outline how the US seems to have deviated from the high values set forth by the founding fathers and (from the outside) appears to now have the best political system money can buy. But I digress, I don’t really want to get into my thoughts on politics today. The film was cool – a lot of ‘Murrica Fuck Yeah! and a bit of history thrown in to boot.

We had a delightfully condescending tour guide – unfortunately no self guiding through this place – who I dare say was primarily familiar with dealing with 8th graders and proceeded to treat all of us like thus. Miss Clemens guided us around the various chambers and told us very little history of the place, nothing of the workings of the place, so her primary function seemed to be to herd us from space to space with the precision of an air traffic controller and give people chances to take photos – all the while speaking to us in a smattering of Italian ‘because the painter responsible for the frescoes in the Rotunda, Constantino Brumidi, was of Italian and Greek descent’. I did note that her Greek was lacking to absent, so I assume she was just big noting herself … fuckin’ plonker.

We went through the Crypts where no one is actually fucking buried, because it was built for George Washington, but he’s actually interred elsewhere – would have thought that particular misnomer would have been rectified over the last few hundred years, but apparently not.

Then we spent some time being marched through the Rotunda at the centre of the Capitol Building itself which is really quite spectacular. You don’t see architecture like this in Australia, and I haven’t seen anything this impressive since I was last in Europe. It is interesting to me (an as art wanker) to see how many Greek/Roman Classical motifs, and Medieval European design elements are incorporated into the building and it’s aesthetic. Not sure Mr K appreciated my lectures though! 😛




Throughout the Rotunda and the next space we encountered called the Hall of Statues, which was once the meeting space of the House of Representatives before they outgrew it, are large bronze and marble statues of noteworthy Americans – everyone from Lincoln, Washington, Regan, Lydon Johnson to Rosa Parks, Hellen Keller and Martin Luther King Jnr. Most of the statuary is donated by the States, and each state is allowed to supply only two statues on plinths with their State name on it… should a State wish to replace one of their statues, they can do so, but only with the approval of Congress to make sure we don’t get ten Neil Armstrong statues in the line up! Several states have replaced statues – mostly because they accidentally commissioned a statue of some long dead old guy who might once have meant something back home, but who wasn’t recognizable on the national stage. So these statues are scattered throughout the building.



After taking in the official tour, we decided to visit the public viewing galleries because Congress was sitting today and went on up to the House of Representatives gallery (gorgeous tiles on the floor up here, but no cameras allowed). We saw them opening the session which was a unique experience for both of us. We saw the Speaker call the session to order, some Reverend Patrick Conroy, Chaplain of US House of Representatives said a prayer while all bowed heads (including observers in the gallery), and then we saw something we’ve never seen before – everyone turned behind the Speaker and said the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag… with hands fervently on hearts. Talk about feeling like an outsider looking in, while you’re actually simultaneously blending in with the crowd. Mr K refers to it as ‘Jane Goodalling’ and today, I could really feel it. (The Australians are attempting to observe the natives in their natural habitat and today noticed some odd group behaviour patterns.) Seriously, it was like watching some sort of cult religious observances and it felt really weird – probably would have, even without the little girl down our row looking at us like we were from out of space for not following suit.

When the session started, we got a variety of ‘Gentlemen of X State’ (men and women congress representatives all, ‘gentlemen’) addressing the house on whatever the hell pleases them… first guy got up and talked about the Hobby Lobby from a woman’s right to choose her own health care perspective; second guy got up and spoke about some dead commander who was obviously a cool dude and should have a proclamation read about him; next guy got up and talked about how Obamacare sucked; someone else stood and talked about how unemployment is really shit and how the government needed to provide decent unemployment to avoid poverty; then some random congressman got up and talked about how his state basketball was on a huge winning streak (no doubt he just put the mockers on them) and how proud his entire state is of them ‘Go Shockers!’ (he literally said that); then we were back to the Hobby Lobby and this time about abortion and a childs right to exist… all a bit disjointed and accomplishing nothing. I am sure it gets better than this, but we didn’t stick around to find out – apparently the Prime Minister of the Ukraine was addressing this afternoon and someone invited the Pope to come speak at some future date. No segue. 😀

After that we head over the the most expensive non-airport cafeteria ever for a quick salad and then off to The Library of Congress, which is a very, very cool building. Here we cranned our necks for about an hour looking at all the amazing frescoes which had the names of a multitude of famous authors painted amongst romanesque be-draped women and cherubs, and laurel wreaths and other motifs of antiquity. Authors such as Euripides, Homer, Aristotle and Seneca were littering the ceilings along with Milton, Tennyson, Dumas, Dante and a bunch of other authors most visitors have probably never read and many of which they have probably never heard of. Lots of beautiful mosaics, fabulous marble carved columns and staircases, (you’d think they’d have learned from Europe – marble staircases don’t wear well and end up all uneven and difficult to walk up) and the frescoed ceilings were fabulous, even if they were predominantly in a hideous orange colour.



We managed to pop up to the viewing gallery that overlooks the main Reading Room and attempt to have a look down into one of the most extensive and impressive libraries in the world which was behind a huge plexiglass wall standing about two foot back from the marble baulstrading – which meant if you were five foot tall (like me) you couldn’t see down into the library properly at all… sucks to be the two guys in wheelchairs that were up there with us – bad planning that. From the pics I took with the camera held above my head, it is pretty fucking impressive down there. 🙂 I had taken about two dozen photos when a guard came and told me ‘no photography’ and I pointed at a sign at the entrance to the space saying ‘no flash photography’ and assured him that my flash was off. He got all hoity toity and said the sign was wrong and photography wasn’t allowed, just as another guard came in behind him with a group saying ‘photos are fine, but no flash photography is allowed’. Dickwad just scowled and walked away… there seemed to be a bit of, ‘this is my domain and I will make up the rules for you tourist-types as we go along’ mentality going on with the people who work in these buildings. Nevermind. I got some shots.


If you happen to be in DC, make sure you check out the Library of Congress gift shop – not only did they have lots of cool souvenirs, it was also a kick ass bookshop.


So far, we had managed to stay indoors all morning, thanks to a convenient tunnel that connected the Capitol Building and the Library of Congress, but now we had to put all them layers on and brave the cold to get down to the National Archives which was next on our list. We got about 200m down the road and even though it had warmed up to 0C and felt like -6C, we piked pretty quickly and took a cab. The wind was just bitterly cold.


Got down to the National Archives and saw that there was a line up out the door to get in! One guy behind me said, “We are so going to freeze our asses off out here. Oh well, I guess it’s all for the good of the Constitution.” Huh? … Holy shit, we were standing there only about three minutes absolutely freezing, and just about ready to pike, when a nice guy from Marshall County, Kentucky came up to us and said he had a booked school group going straight in a side door and he had space for seven more people and did we want to jump the queue! Hells yes! We joined in with his kids (who were apparently all from an honours class of some sort) and got straight in the door. Win!

Naturally I did NOT take that last photo! We got inside and saw the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and the Bill of Rights which are all housed there. Unfortunately, none of these documents have been stored by fastidious Benedictine monks for the last two hundred years, so they are barely legible, quite faded and unhappy looking parchments. From the sections of the documents you could make out, you could see absolutely exquisite penmanship, the likes of which you just don’t see these days… though a little kid next to me was lamenting: “I can’t read any of it! Their handwriting is like, way too messy!” No Whinging Kid, that crap you call handwriting is chook scratchings! Other than that, I noticed the guards were carrying cool S&W revolvers, and I bought a red, white and blue, Democratic Donkey scarf in the gift shop as we left. 🙂

Thus ended our tour of the buildings today, with plenty more to hit tomorrow. Couldn’t get over how all these attractions are FREE. All of it, and only spied one donation box to throw a fiver into. Have to love that.