I had been thinking about visiting Washington for several months so it seemed a logical place to start the Big Journey Home.

1 May 2002. Departure

Finally, I am underway!

6.00am. Alarm rings. 6.10am. Alarm rings again. 6.12am. Curse the world and alarm clocks in particular.

Since everything was packed last night, all I had to do was grab a quick shower, throw a few things into the bag and get out of the house. I would have thought that after 18 months in the apartment I would feel a slight tug of emotion to be leaving, but having been told it was our favourite crazy taxi driver the moment was lost. Well, that and the fact of having about 4 hours sleep in the last 48 hours I must admit I wasn't quite focussed.

I had a final good-bye breakfast at the S&S Restaurant in Inman Square with Seamus, Barrett and the spirit of Ed "No Show" Cuoco, who incidentally suggested a breakfast in the first place. But then he is one of the few employed people that I know and since his lady will be moving to Europe soon I suppose he can be forgiven.

My last stop on way to Logan Airport was to pick up some travellers cheques and complete a few change of address (and country) formalities at Boston Federal, and to say goodbye to the tellers. They are only the second place in Boston where they knew my name, the other being Mr Dooley's Tavern on Broad Street.

Check-in at Logan was much quicker than I expected, even with the extra security in place. The girl at the American Airlines counter was a bit surprised when I pulled out a 1/4" thick wad of tickets and so we had a little chat about the route. I was also a little surprised to find my rucksack weighed in at nearly 40lbs. I guess I need to reconsider some of the stuff I have.

The baggage screeners were really happy to see me though. I have a small daypack that I had put the valuables in, like camera, Libretto, chargers and accessories. Apparently having too many metal items is very confusing for the operators so they had had to hand check everything. At least it gave them some variety and I had a chat with the US Army supervisor about digital photography while I was waiting.I just feel sorry for the guy who has to check everyone's shoes.

The plane was an Embraer 135, which I thought was appropriate since my next destination is Brazil. I had a window seat and had a nice view of Boston on take-off. We had a sharp turn over Castle Point on leaving, at least this time there was no chance of running aground.

Washington National Airport is very close to the Capitol building, so nobody was allowed to move about the cabin during the last half hour of the flight (which was only one hour long). If anyone had left their seat we would have been diverted to another airport and I guess the offending person would have a little bit of explaining to do. I arrived to a warm and slightly humid afternoon in Washington and since it was only a few stops on the Metro underground railway and a short walk to the Hotel (Best Western Capitol Skyline, (10 I Street SW, Tel: (202)488-7500) $80 per night) it didn't seem worth getting a cab. Unfortunately I arrived way too early to check-in so I took to opportunity to sit in the lounge and catch up with some computer stuff. What I really wanted was to take off my boots and get some sleep.

2 May 02. National Mall

Starting at the botanical gardens near the Capitol building, wandered along Jefferson drive to the Sculpture Garden outside the Hirshhorn Museum and then along the National Mall to the Washington Monument. To be honest, I expected the Mall to be more like the central London parks, or even Post Office Square in Boston, not a scrubby patch of grass with large parts either flooded or bare earth.

The Washington Monument is a huge stone needle that would look more at home in Egypt, and although it was open to the public you had to queue at a ticket office at 7am each day and the tickets would be gone in under half an hour of opening.

From the Monument, I walked down to the Lincoln Memorial, which is much bigger than I expected. I was hoping get a photo of Lincoln with a pot of Marmite on his knee. But the statue of Lincoln itself is 19 feet tall and carved from 28 separate blocks of white marble. And it is roped off and supervised by rangers from the Parks Service. I’m not sure how the would have reacted to any attempts to cross the rope, but I got the impression they would have had a sense of humour failure. Carved on the inside of the memorial are inscriptions of the Gettysburg Address (Four score and seven years ago...) and his Second Inaugural Address (thanks dudes!) along with murals depicting events from his life.

Somehow it seems only fitting that as a tribute from the American People, it took 34 years from Congress saying yes to deciding where to build it, and a further 13 years before construction began. Once they got going it only took 8 years to build and it was eventually dedicated in 1922. And people say that the current bureaucracy is slow?

While I was there, somebody was filming a public service announcement starring some American Football player. I watched them do five takes of him turning around and giving the camera a big cheesy grin and wandered off to the Vietnam War Memorial instead.

The Vietnam War was a defining event for the US, and being there just a few days before Veterans Day (equivalent to Memorial Sunday in the UK) it was quite busy. Around the entrance are directories listing all those who died, together with which part of the memorial their names are inscribed on. Several people were taking photographs and rubbings.

From there it was a short walk over to Dubya's place on Pennsylvania Ave, but like many government buildings it was still closed to the public for security reasons. The last stop was back where I started at the Capitol Building, home to the Congress and Senate. Again, tours have been suspended for security reasons, although there was a demonstration campaigning for increased support to Israel, or something like that.

3 May 2002. Spiderman

Had breakfast at the hotel this morning. Just cereals and toast, which is all they serve. Just after I had returned to my room I had a phone call from my relatives in Brazil asking if I could bring a few things from the US, so seeing as the weather forecast was for rain and storms, I decided to go to a mall. Pentagon city was the closest and seems reasonable from the tourist guide. And as it turned out, it wasn't so bad. I managed to get some longer walking socks, a headphones adaptor for the Libretto (only I think I left the headphones behind!) and some socket converters too.

Had a food-court Cajun spicy chicken for lunch which was just about spicy. I still don't really get along too well with Cajun - it seems to be just pure heat - when compared to Indian spices but I suppose I'll keep trying it every so often. Having traipsed all around the place trying to find the requested items for Brazil, I called it quits and watched the new Spiderman movie instead. It was good fun, and it really paid attention to the detail. I mean, if you had just finished high school and became a superhero, wouldn't you want to play a bit?

After the movie I found another section of shops just outside the mall and was able to get some more packing bags and a couple of odds and ends before heading back to the hotel.

4 May 02. Smithsonian

Today was the day. The real reason for coming to Washington: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Hey, I'm a techie, what did you expect? My first reaction was how small it was, when compared to places like the London Science Museum. But they have managed to pack so many exhibits into the space that it seems almost TARDIS like inside.

In the entrance hall was the Apollo 11 Command Module (first moon landing), the Wright Flyer (first powered flight), Spirit of St Louis (first trans-atlantic flight) and a prototype/spare from the Viking missions to Mars. Add the Bell X-1, Gemini and Mercury capsules, various missiles from the V2 to Pershing, a Saturn 5 first stage engine, Hubble prototype, Soyuz capsule, engineering mock-up of an Eagle lander from the Apollo missions, and it’s not surprising that I spent all day there. Oh, and don’t forget the hundreds of smaller exhibits in the side galleries either.

After closing time it was time to get some dinner, and I ended up at the Austin Grill, which is a fairly decent tex-mex joint. They also had live coverage of the Kentucky Derby, which everyone was getting excited about. To me it was just another horse race and was all over in a couple of minutes to much cheering and cursing from the patrons at the bar. But then, I don’t get excited about the Grand National either.

4 May 02. Leaving the U.S.A.

My last day in Washington (and the US too). Not enough! I could easily have stayed another two weeks just to see the other museums.

I did manage to get a quick tour of the Natural History Museum, and spent some time taking photos of the fountain near the Hirshhorn Museum, but since I didn't have an official Olympus memory card in there, the Panorama mode didn't work. At some point I'll download the hack to modify the vendor ID in all my cards to fix that...

Then it was time to say goodbye, and head back to National Airport. Again check-in was an interesting experience. Not only did they want to check my day-pack full of camera gear, but they also interpreted the three big bars of Bournville Dark (a present for my relatives in Brazil) as a big slab of explosives. The security guard was extremely nervous and made me take everything out and then took swabs of the wrappers for further tests just to be sure. I was nervous of the two Marines standing not too far away watching with keen interest. I don’t want to think what his reaction would have been if he'd opened my Marmite jar, that stuff seems to offend normal Americans at the best of times!

One annoyance of the new & improved security measures is you can still buy postcards and stamps at the airport. But you cannot post them as all the post boxes have been either sealed or removed. And none of the airline or shop staff are allowed to accept cards for posting either. Now how's that for stupidity? They probably think that US stamps can be used anywhere in the world.

So long, Uncle Sam.