Sunday

We planned to spend the day in Washington, but getting there proved a challenge.

Annapolis has consistently voted to keep the railway at bay (overtones of the Marion-v-Dunkin Donuts movement – and for much the same reasons I suspect – to keep the riff-raff away!).  Although with the nation’s capital a mere 38 miles away there are inevitably a lot of people in Annapolis who commute.  If they don’t drive in, then they have the option of taking their car to the Park and Ride, taking the bus to New Carrollton (10 miles away) which is at the end of one of the Washington metro routes, and from there it is only 15-20 minutes into the city.  There is also a commuter bus all the way from Annapolis to Washington.  However all these options only operate Monday – Friday.  Even the Greyhound bus will only get you into Washington on a Sunday, the only one returning to Annapolis leaves only an hour after it arrives.  The upshot was we had to take a taxi to New Carrollton and back.

Our visit coincided with the Annual Marine Marathon which disrupted the traffic with lots of closed roads and meant the hop-on, hop-off tourist buses which we planned to utilise were suspended until 2 o’clock.  With so many roads closed, the heart of the city was virtually pedestrianised, and all the more pleasant for it.  From the underground near the Smithsonian museums we walked down to the White House.  There was a flag flying above and I wasn’t sure whether (as with Windsor and Buckingham Palace) this meant the President was in residence.  We peered through the fence and in the far distance was a tall man wearing dark trousers and white shirt standing outside what I would describe as the Garden Room on the ground floor.  Now I know he is (was?) a furtive smoker and I thought it possible this was indeed Obhama having a crafty fag whilst Michele was laying the table for lunch…and as Melv pointed out ‘he was the right colour’.  (We later saw on the TV he had been off campaigning for some of the Democrat candidates, so it couldn’t have been him.)

From the White House we walked to the Vietnam Memorial.  You couldn’t help be moved by the thousands and thousands of names (58,175) engraved on a V-shaped black granite wall, each half of the wall is 246.75 feet long starting with a small slab just 8” high and going up to a 10ft  slab with hundreds of names.  It was designed by an undergraduate at Yale University, Maya Ying Lin, born in Athens, Ohio in 1959.

We continued to the Lincoln Memorial and back to the museums.  Melv chose to go to the Air & Space Museum, whilst I went to the National History where there was a special exhibition about the forensic evidence which could be deduced from skeletons of the early settlers, which had been unearthed in St Mary’s.  The Maryland settlers only had malaria and yellow fever to contend with as the local natives were farming folk and not aggressive.   It has been estimated a third of settlers died within the first year.  One skeleton had been found in the basement of one of the houses, with a large pot on his chest which had been used to push the body into the confined space…this was deduced to be murder (I’d say so!) and quite likely one of the apprentice boys assigned to the house.  They were known to be treated badly in many households and indeed there was a law which stated neither apprentices nor servants could be buried without notifying the authorities first.  Many of the skulls had teeth with grooves which were the result of a lifetime of pipe smoking, although one of the skulls with such teeth belonged to a 12 year old boy! 

Melv enjoyed his time at the museum.  Here is a picture of the X-1, the first plane to break the sound barrier.  Yeah!  I was impressed too!!