Back into DC today to visit the superb Natural History museum which took up a good part of the day. It has some really impressive sights including the Hope Diamond, an African Bull Elephant and a lonely looking Easter Island statue- so a very varied range of exhibits.
We then walked up to Capitol Hill, and back down the Mall to the White House. We weren't too far away from there when we saw quite a few people hanging around the street corner and a lot of police around. K asked some locals what was going on, who told her that the roads had only just been closed and they only do that when the President is coming. Sure enough about a minute later there was a cavalcade of police motor bikes and cars followed by a black car with flags. The crowd went crazy with cheering, which we were not expecting as we couldn't imagine a crowd going wild in Australia if our Prime Minister drove past. The people behind us in the crowd were so excited they were sure that Obama had been looking at them, we could only see a silhouette through the dark windows and he was probably reading paperwork or on the phone, not looking out the window at the two people behind us! We managed to take a video of it, see below, it can also be seen by clicking here..
Yesterday our first look at the White House was from across the huge expanse of lawn between it and the Washington Monument, this time we went around to the other side. On the way we were stopped again at a road block, but this time it was a couple of large black cars with no presidential flags so it couldn't have been Barack (yes, we are on first name terms now). Once we reached the front of the White House we had a much better view, we could also see what we think was a sniper on the roof.
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