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June 17th 2004

After a long flight in which we could see various bits of offshore Canada, we landed amidst thunderclouds, at Washington Dulles Airport. Then the wonderful Metrobus took our bikes (on the front of the bus) to the centre of town. The International Hostelling Youth Hostel was easy to find, but not bike friendly, they didn't want to have our bikes inside the hostel (clearly this isn't France where they are happy to display your bike in the hotel lobby!). Anyhow, having now been awake for about 36 hours, I (Steve) haggled them inside. They are locked in a remote part of the basement, against the stern will of the management! Washington's best bits look like Paris (e.g. the Old Administration Building), I think! But the capitol has a Sacre Coeur wedding cakey feel that's quite nice I suppose. And the White House is impressive, again white for purity of political intention no doubt (hype over reality I guess). The picture is of a Washington DC bike policeman, interrupted in the performance of his duty in order for us to take a photo. Nice to see bike police - not a common site back home in Bradford sadly!

At the Smithsonian Air and Space museum we saw the story of flight. It's nice to see that there, at the very beginning of the story of modern flight, is the bicycle. The Wright's were cycle manufacturers who decided to try branching out a bit. The rest is history. The picture is, according to the notice, a bike that the Wright's made and used themselves. Washington's wide streets lend themselves to cycling though we didn't see on-road cycle routes marked. The Smithsonian museums are free, and compared with most major museums, they seemed empty of visitors. We were able to get a good look at various world famous Monets and Renoirs without any jostling and the curators didn't need to resort to riot control techniques. Such a contrast to the rugby scrum atmosphere in the Louvre or the Van Gogh in Amsterdam.


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