Welcome to Washington

The Capital Building

... DC that is. Between Christmas and New Year's we visited DC to see the nation's capital. We caught the "Chinatown Express" (cheap coaches that run to and from DC and other places along the East Coast. They run from Chinatown in NY to the Chinatown in the place you are travelling to) and stayed for 3 days and 2 nights. Unfortunately, just before we left, ex-president Gerald Ford passed away which meant that a lot of the city shut down to prepare for his funeral arrangements. As a result, we didn't actually get a chance to go inside the Capital Building but we still managed to get views from the outside and take lots of pictures. You can't go inside a lot of the buildings like the White House and the Pentagon since 9/11 which is also a shame. Lu's parents have been and they said they were both very interesting.

Below are some other pictures of our trip...

James outside the war memorial

The Lincoln Memorial

The view of the Washington Memorial from the Lincoln Memorial steps

Statue of Lincoln inside the Lincoln Memorial

View of the Lincoln Memorial

James by the Washington Memorial

Inside the War Memorial

Lu outside the White House

James next to an "old" Vax machine at the Air and Space Museum (James used to programme these in his first job at VicRoads!!)

Christmas turkey

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope your turkey was as yummy as ours (thanks Lu!)

Grab your scarf!

Wow it's cold today! It was 18 degrees F when we woke up this morning (that's almost -8 degrees C) with a wind chill that makes it seem -17 degrees C. James just got to work and told me it felt even colder then when we went skiing in Les Arcs (France) a couple of winters ago. What are we going to be like in Jan/Feb/March when it gets properly cold???!

Although James is thinking that we might go to Miami or somewhere in Florida for my birthday in February - anywhere warm really!

We're also hoping to go away somewhere between Christmas and New Years as it seems a waste to have a week off and not go anywhere. The only problem is trying to find somewhere not to far away that the travel guides say is OK to go in winter. The best option so far is looking like Washington DC as there are heaps of museums all together in one area that we can shelter in if the weather is really horrible.

Well, we're also going to have to brave the elements tonight as its our first meet-up group meeting tonigh. We're meeting up with a bunch of other people that are new/relatively new to NY for drinks tonight and then we're off to look at the Christmas lights/tree at the Rockerfeller Centre (ie. outdoors). Brrrrrr....

Casimir

We went out tonight for a few drinks at Bua (fantastic pomogranate cosmos which are a steal at $5 each until 8pm http://www.buany.com/index.html) and then to a little French bistro near us just a bit further down Ave B called Casimir. I had the mussels steamed in white wine sauce and James had the black boudin sausages with sweet potato mash. Both were tasty but the place was quite empty for a Wednesday night. Shame as it was a cozy place... you'd think it would be busier on a Wednesday even if it was pretty cold. http://www.menupages.com/restaurantdetails.asp?neighborhoodid=0&restaurantid=4871