We took a while to find a suitable hotel to move to - in the end, we found one just a block down the road from the Holiday Inn.
Dave went up to the track at Santa Anita this afternoon. I had a fairly relaxed time, exploring the immediate environs of the hotel and reading by the pool.
The photo shows the view from just over the road, two hundred metres from our hotel - the contrast between the elevated freeway in the foreground with the mountains rising behind.
Jean
Delighted to be in a room which is large enough to display our lovely "Bon Voyage" cards.
Jean
After the frantic pace of New York, Washington was much calmer with wider avenues and roads and generally more space. A very fine city with spectacular views up to Capitol Hill via the Monument and Lincoln Memorial and vice-versa.
All the major government buildings and museums of which there are many are on an impressive scale, mostly in classic styles. The building housing the Archives was a treasure trove and on a smaller scale it was interesting to see the theatre where Lincoln was assassinated and the bed in the house opposite where he died the following morning. Plenty of reminders in all the museums (all free by the way) of the role of the founding fathers such as Jefferson, Franklin and Washington and then later on the Civil War with over 600,000 dead.
Back in the Archives you can see a piece of paper Kennedy wrote/semi-doodled on during one of the critical meetings during the Cuban Missile standoff. Words such as blockade and crisis can be clearly seen. Another gem was the arrest warrant for Lee Harvey Oswald.
Choice of theatres, cinemas, restuarants not as large as NY or Washington but no problem there. we found a really good sports bar where you can eat,,drink and watch the ball game on huge screens above the bar. World series tied at 1-1 at present with three games to come over the weekend.
Hotel/hostel apart (see elsewhere) a great few days but as with New York you really have to shoot round if you want to do it justice. Five or six days much better. Should add that the weather was glorious all the time and now we have reached Pasadena for the Breeders' Cup horse racing it is even more so with temperatures well into the 80s. A few winners tomorrow should help counter the hotel/fiasco (also see below). dave (posting pix for the first time).
After a long flight, we'd been looking forward to the luxury of our expensive hotel in Pasadena - the "media" one for the Breeders Cup. Not that easy, though. They had no knowledge of a Thompson and the confirmation number we'd been given had apparently been cancelled by the Breeders Cup organisers! Ah well, we're nothing if not intrepid. Landed up here at the Holiday Inn, though we're having to move again for the next two days. Still, the hotel is luxurious (compared with what we've become accustomed to) and we're happy!
Jean
Hundreds of miles of barren country and the Grand Canyon in the distance, unfortunately too far away to get a passable photograph. Will have to return!
Jean
So this is the glory of our room in Washington - and you can see both the length and width, less than two metres by two metres. We said a delighted "Goodbye"!
Jean
