Washington DC

Hello unseen reader (if you do exist). Also, unseen programmer at the NSA/CIA/DIA/GCHQ/FSB/RAW who wrote the few lines of code which will enable some bot to trawl the net and come to this blog: hello to you as well. Also, hello unseen far away alien who is monitoring all satellite traffic from a small blue-green planet on one of the outer spiral arms of the Milky Way. Peace to all.

This last weekend, I went on a roadtrip to Washington DC. DC is a small, leafy town on the banks of the Potomac river. It is named so after a certain George, a rather influential figure in the early days of the US. As the showcase of the US, DC is home to some very impressive architecture, a lot of history and some absolutely fabulous museums (most of them run by the Smithsonian, and totally free to the public). Eventually, I will put up some pictures, but right now, there are just these few, for your amusement.

What did we do? Well, we toured the Capitol building (with a very capable tour guide, I believe these people are employed by the Dept. of the Interior: our guide had a superb sense of humour.. more power to them). The rotunda was impressive.. as were the faux 3D paintings on it. We also saw the room where Congress convened when the US had far fewer states... that room has some bizarre echo properties.

The National Air and Space Museum was disappointingly small. I was told that the SR71A Blackbird is stored elsewhere. Damn! The WWII section was not adequately lit up. Makes for lousy, grainy pictures. In fact, the lighting was remarkably unimaginative.

The Library of Congress was home to Thomas Jefferson's personal library (amongst a great many other things, including a Gutenberg Bible). I was intrigued to see that Jefferson was a very erudite man.. who read about gardening, physics, chemistry and law. A man of somewhat wide interests.

The view of the White House is also nice. I keep feeling that it is much smaller than the Raj Bhawan in Calcutta. Any comparison to Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi would be utterly ludicrous.

More will follow.