soooo much has happened ...

... well, not really. SM spent a lovely ten days with me, and I took quite a bit of time off to entertain her. So no posting for a while, I am sure my global audience has missed me! We spent a weekend in Washington (hereafter known as CWNS - city with no seats, because it doesn't have anywhere to sit!). Highlights were a walking tour on Saturday night around the various memorials - I thought it would be an easy way to make sure we saw everything and had some information on it at the same time. Well, "walking" was a term used loosely. We were scooped up by the lovely Sarah at Smithsonian station, jogged around down the mall, around the lake, up the steps, around the tidal basin, and were finally left, legs shaking and blisters throbbing, in a small heap outside the Jefferson Memorial in the dark. In between we got to see the Washington memorial (hard to miss), WWII memorial, Constitution island, Vietnam memorial, Lincoln memorial, Korean memorial, WWI memorial, the future site of the MLK memorial, FDR memorial, and Jefferson memorial. Phew! Pictures of some of these are below.
We enjoyed that experience so well that the next morning, fortified by our breakfast of brioche french toast with pears and turkey bacon, we headed off on another walking tour, this time around Georgetown. This one was more leisurely, which was a good thing as SM had to keep stopping to reapply the bandaids to her feet where her flipflops were rubbing! Then we took a leisurely mule-drawn canal boat ride through Georgetown, and after seeing some more museums had dinner at a great place called Sala Thai up at 13th and U Street. Given I had three strong cocktails and Mum had four, we literally floated back to Akwaaba Inn through some slightly dodgy backstreets.
Museums were great there, and the train trip there and back was SOOO easy. So all good. Apart from that, just moseying around in New York. Took another trip out to Woodbury Common and loaded up on cold weather gear for the trip to the Arctic. I am so colourful and plump that I look like all the teletubbies rolled into one... but things are so cheap here compared to the UK for this kind of gear. Just the boots to go - knee high rubber boots - oooer matron!