A very West Wing day.

With the Liar tucked safely in bed, the rest of us got up early to tour the Library of Congress.  I had been for a run the previous evening, which let me have a bit of a look at the mall and the river.  This was the first real exploration of the city.

Even the nice buildings in Washington look sort of fake.

The walk down took about twenty minutes; we were staying right in the middle of downtown.

National Archives

Some dork walking up to a fountain.

With only one major war having been fought on US soil, there was a level of predictability to the statues around D.C.

General Winfield Scott Hancock

General George Meade (and friends)

As much as I disparage the 'fake' nature of the buildings in D.C. they were certainly very impressive.

The Capitol

I don't know what I expected the Library to be.  It was an amazing building.

The Library of Congress

The decorating is pretty crazy.

The total lack of books, we were told, was part of the design. The opening rooms of the building are designed to welcome people, surrounding them with images and names and phrases of learning and inspiration.

Look! Up on the ceiling!

"Too low they build who build beneath the stars."

After the tour we went for a walk up and down the mall.  The Smithsonian dominates, a splash of red in the field of white.

Joseph Henry

The most impressive Department of Agriculture I've seen.

Squirrel! And he has a nut!

It's easy to find the monuments people know best.  They're not subtly designed.

The Washington Monument isn't hard to spot.

Nor is the Lincoln Monument.

Oh, that's what the pool is for.

The Lincoln monument was my favourite, I don't know that pictures can do it justice.

What a great statue.  It's so big!

On our way back we stopped for some photos of the White House.  People around us were making a fuss about seeing Michelle, but we didn't see anyone.

Is this the White House?

Just a few blocks from where we were staying, we found the Talk's favourite diner.  I don't know why he made such a fuss about Ollie's Trolley, when the Skeptic didn't care at all.

Famous for its Ollie Burgers and Ollie Fries.

That night we went to dinner in Georgetown with a couple of cool people we had met in the hostel.  I read the description of an item on the menu (a Wisconsin burger) which stated it was a burger between two grilled cheese sandwiches.  I checked with the waitress, and she confirmed my suspicions. One of our new friends overheard my conversation and said, "Shut up! You have to order that."

So I did.

Oh yeah, I ate it.

Afterwards we went to Capitol Brewing and had a scotch, and a few beers, and a "Monumental brownie."

I ate some of it.

The night was a total victory for Washington D.C.  We were sad to be leaving in the morning.

The US healthcare system is in chronic need of reform.

This was not the best day of the trip.  The Liar got up and announced that he had to see a doctor, because he was getting worse, not better.  He headed off for George Washington University Hospital, while the rest of us had a wander around downtown Washington.

As the weather cleared up, Washington became appealing.

Soon afterwards he sent me a text saying, "I have HIV or mono." I jumped the next bus to the hospital and went to see if he was okay.  We waited another hour for the results to come back.  He said that the guy admitted before him had been stabbed in the arm, that the woman across the hall (who spent twenty minutes screaming) had lost the end of her finger.

The Liar having a 'little drink.'

The results came back positive for mono.  "You know what mono is, right?" I asked.  "Glandular fever."  He hadn't known, and he wore an expression of relief.

"Glandular fever," his doctor said, "I'll have to remember that."  She gave him a list of stuff he couldn't do; "No paracetamol, no drinking, no contact sports for at least a month."

"It's been twenty-three years," I told her, "another month won't hurt."

He had to finish the saline in his bags, so we waited another hour or so for that.  One of the hospital research assistants fainted next to me while we were waiting.  The Liar was checked out just as she was admitted.

Aleksander Pushkin

We walked through the GWU campus to find a pharmacist, where we learned it takes several hours to fill a prescription in the States.  So I took the Liar back to the hostel for a nap.

Who did the district sleep with?

The drive from Boston to Washington D.C. took a little longer than we expected.  We had to backtrack through New York, then through Baltimore and into D.C.

So I'm driving, driving, driving...

When we arrived, we found that the "hostel" we had booked was ambitiously defined.  It was in a part of town which I could succinctly describe as "dodgy," and was a guy's house, which he had called a hostel.  We stepped back out the door to "find our passports," and looked for alternative lodgings.

Powering through Baltimore.

We wound up staying right in the heart of the city, five blocks from the White House.  We made our way south to find some dinner, and ate at a place called Harry's, because it served hamburgers and had the football on television.  Both the Liar and the Skeptic opted to head to bed early, so the Talk and I watched the Giants/Bears game and ate cake.

"One serve" of cheesecake at Harry's.

We didn't know, at the time, how sick the Liar really was.