Slept in and woke up with a shocker of a sore throat. Went to the Drug store for some medication and the convenience store for some good old salt and vinegar chips, which is the only way to treat a sore throat, mind you. Back on the Metro and into the city. We surfaced on 'The Mall' near the Smithsonian Castle. We walked down past the White House to say Hi to Bill, Hillary and Buddy the dog. As the elections were held last week it was about time for them to go. We continued walking along the reflecting pond to the Lincoln Memorial. Lots of photos were snapped. We took some time to walk around the Vietnam and Korean War memorials. As Veterans Day was only days prior to this, all the reefs and flowers were still around. Very sombre.

We wanted to visit Arlington Cemetery next. The city guide said that the nearest metro station to us was Foggy Bottom. So we looked up the map and headed that way, for a while I might add. We rode to the metro station for Arlington Cemetery and resurfaced. We turned around and there was the back of the Lincoln memorial. Doh, if we had walked straight to the cemetery, we would have arrived quicker than the time it took to walk to Foggy Bottom. This reinforces why maps should always be drawn to scale. Oh well, at least the exercise was good.

Now we had some time to check out the cemetery. It was gigantic, all the white grave stones formed a long line no matter which way you looked. We went up to see the grave of J.F.K. The colours of the trees and the late afternoon light painted a surreal scene in front of us. Out with the cemetery map and we found our way to the Iwo Jima statue. I never realised how big this thing was. It is massive. After a few photos we walked back through the cemetery before it closed. We chose to walk back to the Lincoln memorial this time. Spent some time taking in the night time views of the memorial and the Washington Monument, might have even snapped a photo or 7 : ). Due to a long day of walking we decided to go back to the hostel and chill out on the veranda with a nice bottle of Aussie Chardonnay.

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