Week 3, part five, Watergate, kayaking and giant insects on the loose!

Here's something they have in the U.S that we don't have (as much) in the U.K. Giant insects. I found this one under a sofa cushion, and named him Houdini.

This is just a bench that amuses me whenever I walk past it. How did it come to be so slanted?! Is it a piece of post-modern art?

 

I ended up walking past the Watergate hotel complex whilst I was in the Foggy Bottom area of town the other day. All of my GCSE history memories flooded back! I find it odd that people still live there, and that apartments and the hotel continue to this day. I guess they probably benefit from its notoriety.

 

The highlight of the weekend was kayaking across the Potomac river. A group of us rented the kayaks (which had 2 people per boat, where as I always thought that canoes had multiple people, and kayaks were singular?) and paddled around for a bit, looking at the waterfront from the water. We were able to see the bridge that we had walked over to get to Georgetown (the place with the famous cupcakes!) a few weeks ago. In the other direction we got some greta views of the Lincoln Memorial and Washington monument. The trees in the middle of the image are on a small, sandy island, which we landed on to eat lunch! The island had these large, black, white & yellow butterflies which no one was able to photograph. I loved the fact that it forms a mini-beach in the middle of what is otherwise a thoroughly metropolitan city. This is visible in the photo with the high-rise buildings in the background.

*In case anyone was wondering, there is just as much, if not more coverage of the Royal baby in the U.S than in the UK. CNN, Fox and every other news channel have been updating on this story all day, even contrasting the use of C-sections and epidurals in England and America in a special programme. There is hardly any regional or even national news, which is amazing for a nation the size of the States.  If you're one of those people who dislikes coverage of these events in the UK, think how much worse it is in the U.S.A, for whom the British Royal family is irrelevant - otherwise what was the purpose of the prided War & subsequent Declaration of Independence?