Well that was dull
Trip Start
Dec 06, 2006
1
100
188
Trip End
Ongoing
Laurel,
Maryland,
United States
Monday, November 26, 2007
I decided to set the alarm early so that the fun bus could be on the road sometime soon after 7 as I fancied seeing if I could get on a tour of the Capitol. Seems ridiculous really, I managed to go inside there but in 22 weeks of living in Wellington I didn't make it on the parliament tour. Anyway, after some battling with commuter traffic and the hilarious GPS (that thought telling me to keep right then turn left across 4 lanes of traffic in 100 yards was funny) I got there and in line (that's an American queue) for the first tour at 9.15.
It was all very exciting being taken through security and going inside, but the tour itself wasn't actually very good. The vast majority of it was being told where to stand as apparently the police, who didn't look too fussed, are actually very strict about it. It was also just two rooms, but the first room was the inside of the dome which is cool. The main problem with being treated like cattle is that you couldn't actually look around properly and look at things. We stood in one corner and had some paintings described to us, then went in a second room and had some statues named and described. Rubbish. The exciting rooms, the senate and house of representatives needed separate passes with even more strict security so I gave it a miss. There was a comedy highlight though when our guide told us she was going to demonstrate the acoustics and walked to the other side of the room bent over and started talking to the floor.
9.15 group, can you hear me? Raise your hands if you can hear me, this shows how good the acoutics are and why this was called the whispering chamber.
Nutter. After that I had a wander up towards the pointy thing at the end of the mall (not a shopping centre this time. Very confusing) and then across to take a look at Dubya's gaff. By then the clock was a ticking as the car was due to be dropped off that afternoon. Getting there wasn't a problem other than stopping for tolls all the time. But once we'd made it to Manhattan the gridlock and beeping started up pretty sharply. It wasn't too many blocks to go and after dumping the stuff in the hostel we finally got rid of the car which was quite a nice feeling.
