Down to DC cont...

Sunday was another busy day & full of lots of walking. As we were walking to our first destination, the White House, there was a lady on the other side of the street, who was obviously a little crazy. We heard her screaming at this family (who didn't provoke her) - she told them she was going to destroy them! It was funny from the other side of the street. We walked past President Bush's residence and then on to the Washington Monument (the tallest building in the district). We didn't go up the monument because all the tickets had sold out for the day.

Beno at the White House

We walked on the the (empty) reflecting pool and up the stairs to the Lincoln Memorial - a dedication to the president who freed slaves. When you looked back from the top of the memorial, the Washington Monument was reflected in the reflecting pool.

If you look closely, you can see the Washington Monument reflecting in the very little water in the reflecting pool

We walked along the Tidal Basin (the bay) to downtown where all the museums are. We walked in on a St Patricks Day parade, although we couldn't work out why there was a parade a week early. There were marching bands, men in kilts, and all sorts of weird looking people (including the lady below).

A lady dressed up for the St Patricks Day parade - she had green clover glasses on too

Speed Racer - cars in the parade

We walked back to the hotel and jumped in our car and headed uptown to a place called Adams Morgan, which is renowned for its Ethiopian community and Ethiopian cuisine. Kristy had been talking it up all weekend. We walk in and no one was in the restaurant, but we sat down and ordered. We ordered 2 dishes - Ryan ordered lamb and Kristy ordered beef - the waitress asked if we would like our beef cooked well done, which we said no medium please. 3 minutes later 1 dish comes out and it wasn't what either of us had ordered. Instead it was a massive pancake (about the size of a giant pizza) that looked like tripe. On top was mince, feta and a tomato salad. The idea was to rip of a bit of pancake, put some beef on, then feta, then salad and roll up like a spring roll. We had a few pieces, and Ryan thought that the mince was raw. We asked the waitress if it was cooked, she said it was. By this stage we were totally turned off, and asked her to cook it some more for us. It came back out and the meat was grey (as opposed to red) and looked cooked. We picked a bit more, but couldn't stomach it.

After this we went for a drive to the Pentagon, which was just out of town. It was actually really boring. We could see some construction work on the building - not sure if it was from September 11.