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Washington, Williamsburg and Wilmington. 10 days of driving, walking, and bike riding but most importantly 10 days of ingesting American history.

Washington was hot and crowded with tourists but historically entertaining. It is a planned city with vast tracts of land dedicated to the people of the United States. A stunning vista has been created along the corridor of the Mall providing an uninterrupted view from Capitol Hill all the way through to Lincoln Memorial. Due respect is paid to past great presidents whilst ongoing goverment business continues to be conducted in the corridors of power (sometimes underground). Whilst there are metal detectors and security guards everywhere there is still access to most buildings. One of the funny things we noticed was that most American families stopped by the tshirt vendors and purchased matching tie-dyed shirts and then proceeded to wear them around each day. Not a good fashion look and not a good safety procedure either as every single other family was doing the same thing!

We visited a lot of sites whilst in this capital city, that makes it protest so eloquently on its number plates by stating 'Taxation without representation', so let me categorise the sites so I don't go on too long.

Popular museums (Air & Space, Natural History, Botanic Gardens) - these sites were totally crowded, littered with garbage and somewhat dark (with the exception of the gardens). Lucy lost it in the Natural History museum as there were just too many people and it was extremely noisy. Dozens of tour buses line the mall dropping off school children and primarily Asian tourists for the obligatory visit to these museums. Unfortunately we didn't get to the Dulles site of the Air & Space and thus missed 'the Enterprise' but we did see the original 'Kitty Hawk' having seen a replica in Kitty Hawk. Go figure!

Ticketed museums (Capitol, White House, Bureau of Printing and Engraving) - these sites required a timed pass to visit and thus the number of tourists entering at one time was minimised. Our Capitol tour was a private tour in one sense as we were the only North Carolinian family visiting that day and thus the lovely intern from Senator Dole's office was our private tour guide. But it was not so private in that the other 49 states had tours going on at the same time! However we got to see the 2 NC statues, the Wright Brothers fresco and stand on the star in the centre of DC. The BEP was a truly awesome visit. Andrew headed over there and lined up at 8am for tickets snagging us a gig at 9:30am. We drank Starbucks(!) while we waited and saw how large $1M looks in $100 notes. The tour took us into the real facility for printing notes and we could smell the ink and hear the paper rushing through giant machines as we walked through. As you know we didn't make it into the White House but we did see a cool cavalcade of cars with ambulance and police in tow leave the grounds.

Outdoor attractions (Monuments, Arboreteum, Eastern Market) These three sites were amongst our favourties. We rode bike around the monuments and memorials with Lucy riding around in a burley. She thought is was great fun to sit back with her snacks and drinks and was sad to give the bikes back. Our tour guide explained the underlying history of the sites to us and we enjoyed learning about some of the early presidents as well as understanding more about the casualties of war. Lucy enjoyed running around the Korean war memorial and spelling out the letters on the wall "Freedom is not free". When I called her back to stop touching the letters and move out of peoples photos some of the other tourists said that she should stay at the wall as she actually 'made' the photo by representing the freedom that was fought for. Check out the video from last week to see those photos. The Arboreteum is on the outskirts of the city and features the National Herb Garden and National Bonsai Collection both worth a stroll around. We also saw the original Capitol columns now housed there. Eastern Market, Eastern Market, can you please move to Wilmington? The fruit, the crepes, the meat, the artwork all together make me rue living in a small town.

Quiet attractions (Library of Congress, Supreme Court, American Art museum and National Portrait Gallery) The Library of Congress is the world's biggest library, can be used by anyone over 16 and is free. It houses some of the original books donated by Jefferson to start the Library and there is a special exhibition with the original Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence documents. One of 3 existing perfect Gutenberg bibles in on display every day. What more can I say? Go there. And if you can't go there in person go to http://www.loc.gov/ The Supreme Court building is impressive and the Art musuem holds some great paintings (focussing on US Presidents)

Not-so-crowded museums (Old Postal Pavilion, Postal Museum) These museums are great spots but not popular with the tour buses and thus great for us. The Pavilion provides an awesome view of the city and hardly anyone seems to know about it. The Postal museum was highly interactive and Lucy even got to buy a book about 'Clifford goes to Washington DC'. She drove the purple delivery truck, wrote a postcard to Grandma and we looked at lots of really old unique stamps (mostly with errors and thus very rare)

Expensive attractions (International Spy museum) At $18 each and no strollers allowed, Lucy slept whilst Andrew entered the murky world of espionage. Lots of cool gadgets and stories but none that I can tell you here, or I'd have to shoot you!

Child friendly (National Zoo, Smithsonian Castle carousel) The Zoo was okay but is undergoing major restructuring by building a large elephant area. Also most of the animals are asleep during the day so action at the panda station was fairly low. Lucy enjoyed the honking flamingos and seeing an elephant having a bath (or as she keeps telling me, he was technically having a shower). The carousel proved a big hit and we went there on two separate days for a ride.

Out of Washington (Arlington National Cemetery, Mount Vernon, Annapolis) The cemetery is extremely large and it is eerie how many headstones can be seen. We saw the major sites along the bus tour route and can recommend going early before the hordes arrive. Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington and the only president not to live in the White House, was a very fun day trip. His house decorated in a stylish vivid green is a must see as is the stunning view of the river. A highlight here was eating at the Mount Vernon Inn where we encountered delicious peanut soup with chestnuts, pork pye and duck & sausage cassuolet. Annapolis, the original capitol is a cute red brick town. We dined very well along the river front and now we can say that we have stepped foot in Maryland (I think we are up to 12 states.

Eating (Bistro Bis, B.Smiths, Trader Joes, Ebenezers) We LOVED LOVED LOVED Bistro Bis and Ebenezers going back to both of them multiple times. Ebenezers is a church cafe ie a church owns the cafe and runs meetings there but apart from that it is a regular cafe and it was literally 3 houses down from our accommodation. We taught them to make babyccinos and we went there almost everyday! Bistro Bis is a well connected French restaurant with awesome food. The chef sent a message to me that he wasn't prepared to serve the duck consomme that I had ordered. Disappointed I accepted the vichyssoise he offered in replacement. Absolutely divine. I could eat that soup forever. Forget the sea scallops, the french onion soup or Lucy's 'mac and cheese' made with gruyere. The vichyssoise was to die for. We finally visited Teader Joes and had fun roving the aisles until we encountered a 150 person checkout queue (no exaggeration!) Thankfully 15 cashiers moved us along. B.Smiths was a little disappoitning. Advertised as southern food, the bread served was regular rolls rather than biscuits! We know our southern food by now and obviously this is catering for a northern audience.

I will leave you with one strong impression that I had during this trip and that is the American penchant for painting history in a different light. Changing the facts, well changing the appearance to make things look like you think they should. We encountered this several times. Firstly at Bentonville Battlefield. The original slave quarters were demolished. An old outbuilding was still standing and thus the National Parks decided to portray this building as the slave quarters. No matter that it was half the size of the original and no matter that it was in the wrong spot, it was given the okay because it "looked like what you expect a slave quarters to look like". In the Capitol building dome there is a painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. All the signors are sitting in benches watching one of their number sign. No matter that the signing did not occur this way and each signor rocked up to DC when they could and signed the document alone. History looks better painted this way. This is dangerous people!

Ther eare many more details but all I can say is get ye to DC! (preferably in fall when school is back in session)

this crazy American life (with added summer heat)

We have a new fridge. New in the sense that it came straight from the factory to us but old in the sense that it looks, and is, exactly same as the old one. The new one however does its job cooling the food. The bar fridge ('compact fridge') will be moved into the garage and the deep freezer will be emptied in anticipation of a whole lamb we are planning to order (an organic dorper lamb from a NC farm). Interesting the fridge delivery guy thought our flag was the New Zealand flag. How would he know the New Zealand flag and not the Australian flag?? [No offense to our Kiwi friends and family]

Everyday seems to be crazy busy. This morning Lucy and I were out checking on our 'Hands on Wilmington' project for tomorrow and then went to mom's group. Andrew is at work and due to a power outtage is coming home a little early today. This is great as he has been working so much this week he has hardly seen Lulu. He is picking up the car from the mechanic (they are fixing whatever they broke last week) and then we are going to put the sprinkler out in the backyard. It is 85 degrees and I guess spring is over and we are into summer!!!!!

So we should have 2 problems fixed and hopefully some of the other ones will also be over soon.

On a side note Andrew got an Outback as the loaner car (he was so excited!) The tribeca is an awesome car but it feels like driving a spaceship. The impreza is also awesome but so small here that it feels like driving a go-kart. The outback is somewhere in between but it has a lot more shortcomings than Andrew could remember. I showed him that it has far less space than the tribeca (ie Lucy would kick the seat in front mercilessly), no GPS and no reversing camera (a luxury I know!). It also has a small boot. Anyway he is giving it back today and will drive the tribeca tomorrow so we'll see what he thinks. Personally I love driving the impreza during the day so I am enjoying it now as we when we get back to Oz there is no way we could have one (insurance cost, stolen every other week etc)

That's all, off to frolic in the backyard!

PS Why doesn't anyone comment anymore?? Take a minute and say hi!

wet wet wet

We are in the middle of a tropical downpour which is unusual given the time of year (but it's a good thing because we are in a drought) It has been raining for about 5 hours straight now which makes driving difficult. I still have to consciously think that the windscreen wiper controls are on the right. However the really scary part about driving in the rain around here is the flooding. Wilmington is dead flat (apart from one small 'hill' downtown) and there are no gutters on the roads which means that water just pools where ever it can find a place to do so. And often this occurs on the road which makes it tricky to drive without aquaplaning across the lane. I try to drive in the left hand lane where possible to avoid puddles but unfortunately on the smaller roads there is no choice. Even Lucy said 'wow' when we hit a particularly big puddle on her side of the car this morning.

Scary driving

One of the scary 'innovations' for road building here is having a centre lane which can be used by both sides of the road. It is popularly nicknamed the 'suicide lane' because it is a very dangerous institution esp. with the number of utes/trucks on the road. When turning left off a busy street you turn into the suicide lane very carefully to make sure that no oncoming traffic is also pulling in. You can pull in at any time, anywhere along the road. I guess the Americans don't believe in building dedicated turning bays. It is convenient in a sense but given the driving behaviour around here it is also very very scary. Driver beware!

Silver and gold

Andrew has been kindly getting a lift to work with Steve and Andrew while we were living at Mayfaire. Now that we have moved to our new home we need a second car! We had decided to try and buy a second hand car for about $5,000. After some searching and discussion we discovered that to buy a 4 year old car in decent condition was going to cost around $10,000. After much toing and froing Andrew leased a Subaru impreza. I think this was his secret plan all along but he tells me this is not the hotted up sporty model - just the regular base model. It seems like we are a subaru family. By the way they pronouce it differently over here and I can't even try to describe it except that it is much faster and different emphasis of syllables: Australian - soo baa roo, American sooba roo. It's like Nissan is pronouced Nee sun.

Charleston

We had a fab long weekend in Charleston. We ate well, learnt a little US civil war history and enjoyed walking around the city. Here are the particulars...











Driving

Charleston is about a 3.5 hour drive from Wilmington that is not particularly scenic but very straight. The speed limit was mostly 55mph but on a newer stretch of road near Myrtle Beach it was 65mph. We used 0.5 tank of petrol each way (filling the tank for US$45) We saw lots of trees, some massive factories at Georgetown and lots of tacky signage. One highlight was driving over the Arthur Ravenel bridge into Charleston. Similar to the Anzac Bridge with the large steel cables, these are painted white and seemed to luminesce in the sunlight. Built in 2005 it is the longest cable-stayed bridge in the US and it ws good fun to drive across.





Sightseeing

Charleston Cooks! I headed off to a cooking class whilst Andrew and Lucy wandered the streets (literally). It was a very cool kitchen setup with video cameras located at various points to enable us to directly see the kitchen bench and the stovetop. The class was called "lowcountry cooking" and we were taught how to make gumbo and blueberry pies. Learnt lots of new techniques as well as discovering many new gadgets to get my hands on. And we will be having the gumbo and pies for dinner tomorrow! It was great fun to learn about okra, carolina gold rice as well as very cutting and cooking styles.

White Point Gardens at the Battery. Located on the tip of the Charleston peninsula is White Point Gardens. Great views of the harbour and various surrounding islands. The guide book says that "children love to climb on the old cannons and stacked cannonballs" and naturally Lucy was very obliging in having her photo taken whilst sitting on the cannonballs. We wandered along the waterfront looking at the colourfully painted mansions along the Battery. At one point we found a pier with swinging seats that allowed us to chill out for while in the sea breezes before heading back into the town.









Middleton Place A rice plantation on the Ashley river that is famous for having the oldest landscaped gardens in the US. The gardens were begun in 1741 and follow the principles of André Le Nôtre (designer of the gardens of Versailles). Although a far cry from those amazing gardens at Versailles it was very pleasant to wander around the secret gardens, 1000 year old oak tree and butterfly lakes. Unfortunately the main house was burnt down by union troops in 1865. The Middleton family boasts a number of famous sons including Henry Middleton, President of the First Continental Congress, Arthur Middleton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Henry Middleton, who was Governor of South Carolina and U.S. Minister to Russia, and Williams Middleton, who signed the Ordinance of Secession (which is why the troops burnt the house down). It was a beautiful place to visit with sweeping views of the river, lots of farm animals including peacocks and on site blacksmiths and coopers. Check out the restaurant entry below.






Folly Beach - On a whim we decided to stop off at Folly Beach on the way back from Middleton. Not a good move as everyone else had the same idea as well and the traffic was horrendous. Lucy got down to her nappy and had a swim in the Atlantic which was surprisingly warm (according to Andrew). Obviously the summer holiday season has begun but I would venture a guess that it would be reasonably unpleasant to stay there due to overcrowding and lack of parking. We had trouble finding a spot on the sand to sit and it was body to body.










Fort Sumter This was probably the highlight of our tour. We cruised across the harbour past the Battery out to the Fort having been farewelled by a couple of dolphins. The cruise was just a short one and we arrived at the Fort with Lucy asleep in the pram (she woke up when we got back to Charleston). Originally a sandbar, bolstered with Maine granite to create an impressive fort in its time. Not much is left after the civil war bombardment and it is ironic that the island was made with Yankee granite. As it was Memorial Day the US flag (massive) was at half mast. We toured the museum and learnt a lot about the civil war.







SC Aquarium We were expecting great things from this "number 1 attraction in Charleston". Whilst it was very good it was not especially different from the NC Aquarium we visited a few weeks ago. We saw an Amazon exhibit, lots of river/marshlands fish and some turtles. What can I say? The alligators at the NC exhibit were a lot bigger, scarier and more exciting! However Lucy did get to touch a crab's underbelly here.












Dining

When you go travelling it seems that you spend most of the time either eating or looking for somewhere to eat. We used the guidebook to determine where to eat before we left but we did find a diamond in the rough. Here's the lowdown...

East Bay Deli - French onion soup and broccoli & cheese soup (a standard combo in US cafes that is surprisingly good)

Blossom - The little sister to the famous Magnolias we decided to dine here because 1. Lucy likes to throw food on the floor and 2. They have a wood fired pizza oven that the chef from the cooking class used to run. The pizza was awesome (almost as good as Andrew's Pizza) and the rest of the meal (duck and beef) was excellent as well.

Middleton Place - The three course meal here was divine. I had Charleston she-crab soup (so buttery but light - it was the best ever!), shrimp and grits followed by Carolina Gold rice pudding. Andrew had okra soup, pork bbq and hugenot tart. You can't get much more Southern than those menus! Lucy had a grilled cheese sandwich with chips and fruit. She loved the fresh biscuits (scones).

Boccis - An Italian place close to our hotel that kindly did take away for us. Arancini balls, pasta marinara (simply a tomato sauce and not seafood) and veal saltimbocca.

Jestines - Here is the diamond - every time we drove past there were queues out the door. We were told that a visit to Charleston wasn't complete without trying Jestines home-made coconut cream pie. So we did just that. Andrew dashed down there after the hotel pre-ordered some slices for us. And yes it was very good!

Gaulart & Maliclet (or French and French to the locals) - A little Parisian cafe we breakfasted at. Staff were suitably surly and the chocolate croissant very pleasant. The iced coffee was served in a wine glass with ice cubes. Unusual but ok.

Holden Brother farm - a quick stop here for fresh fruit and vegies including strawberries, blueberries, okra and peppers.

The other left

Driving on the other side of the road has not been a difficult transition. We got a few hundred miles practice driving from Las Vegas to San Francisco via Death Valley and Yosemite a couple of years ago. However there are a couple of things that are difficult that you probably wouldn't have picked.

1. When you get to a four way stop sign (yes, they are slow in getting roundabouts here) you have to giveway to the right. Easy in theory but when you get to a stop sign at the same time as the person on your left, you have the right to go first. My brain has trouble with this! I automatically give them right of way.

2. The windscreen wipers are on the right and the indicators on the left. No problem though it took a lot of concentration when it was raining and I needed to put on the wipers and indicate at the same time. The thing that threw me was that the wipers move from right to left rather than left to right.

3. Having looked at 30 houses, been shopping and gone adventuring on weekends we have driven around ALOT! As time goes by my left and right have gotten more and more confused. I see we have to turn right and I say left. Both Andrew and I have gotten left and right confused and even our real estate agent starting saying the wrong way - pointing left and saying right. We got to the point of say left and the other left.

In any case we went for our driving tests today. After 2 hours, an eyesight test, a signs test, a rules test and a practical test we both walked out with our licences. And we got to choose the background of the licence! (choice of aeroplane, lighthouse, state map or state seal)