Washington DC

Washington was the next destination on our Cosmos tour. Our guide, Margaret is about 60 and she has a weird sense of humour. She is forever talking on the microphone when most people are trying to have a nap. Athough Louise finds the monologue on American History quite soothing and is fast asleep in no time. We think she is the guide as she was actually alive when most of the events took place. No more broken hips yet so she's doing OK. Above is a picture of us outside the World War II Memorial.

We spent a day at the Mall (this must be the only 'Mall' in the USA that has no shops -it’s the name of an area that contains all the Museums and Monuments). The Museum of Natural History was a favourite. Saw a gem collection which included the Hope Diamond (which Warren tried to tell me was the one thrown overboard in the Titanic) and some humungous gem necklaces which would have given their wearer a kink in the neck for sure. Also had a celebrity jewel collection which included the diamond earrings worn by Maire Antoinette.

As well as learning all about gems we also learnt that to be walking around a government building with a giant telephoto lens is to evoke suspicion, no matter how innocent you think you might look. Admittedly, I was there for quite a while waiting for all the tourists to get out of the way. There were 3 armed guards at the front of the Capitol with hand guns and shot guns walking up and down the stairs. We were about to leave and one of the guards came up to us for a ‘friendly’ chat. He asked where we were from and how long we were in DC. When he asked me why I was talking photos of the tourists leaving the building and then wanted to see my photos it became apparent that he wasn’t just being friendly. It probably didn’t look too good that I had taken quite a few pictures of the guards with their guns! I thought it was pretty amusing that I could have been viewed as a security threat but Warren is looking a bit browner and reckons he could pass for an Arab.

Due to some district regulations we had to have a local tour guide in DC. Being a tour guide must be a retirement vocation over here as this guide could have been our regular tour guide’s mother! But apart from talking so quietly that you had to strain to hear her, she did pretty well, waving her umbrella in the air for us to follow her and making sure we took our one photo of Capitol Building before getting back on the bus.

Oh and I almost forgot our visit to the Whitehouse. That's me there inside just about to go and say Hi to George. Yeah Right! Now that I think about it, it's kind of stupid but I actually thought you might be able to go up to the building or at least stroll across the grounds.. but no it's completely fenced off from about 300m in front and there is a guy with a sniper standing on top.

Americans know how to build a monument and that is evident in many places in DC. These things are HUGE and impressive. Our visits included Arlington (where all the people who serve in the military or government are buried) and memorials for the Korean War, Vietnam War and World War II. The Vietnamese memorial was pretty cool they had statues of soldiers in various poses and actual faces of people from the war etched into a wall. That's part of the Vietnam War memorial in the photo above.

My entire knowledge of US monuments exists from TV – the Lincoln monument from the episode of the Simpsons when Lisa goes to DC for the Spelling Bee and the Washington Monument from when Forrest Gump speaks at the Vietnam War protest and Jenny swims across the water to see him…Lincoln was HUGE…. A cartoon doesn’t capture the full scale of it. You can just see Lincoln sitting in his monument in the photo to the left.

After visiting the Vietnam monuments, a lady from NZ on the tour asked if everyone could gather together. We thought we were going to get a tour photo and wished it had been. Instead she asked everyone to stand in a circle, hold hands and sing ‘Now is the Hour’. Just picture 42 old people holding hands and swinging their arms while singing the worst rendition of ‘Now is the Hour’ you’ve ever heard while crowds of tourists stare at us in bewilderment. I burst out laughing and Warren is standing beside me saying ‘shut-up Louise this isn’t meant to be funny’. And to top it all off, at the end of it she announces ‘that was a gift from all the NZers!’ A few of the younger tour members looked at us questionably so I had to let them know that we had nothing to do with that lovely ‘gift’. The Aussies gave us their own gift on the bus with ‘Waltzing Matlida’.

On our final night in DC we went out for dinner with Natalie and Nathan - a couple from Melbourne who we became friends with on our tour. Here we are after polishing off some good old American pizza and wings with range sauce.

(OK well I tried to put the photo up but it appears Blogspot has a few issues and won't let me do it)

Philadelphia & Annapolis

The next stopover on our trip was to the city of Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. On the way we had lunch in Annapolis, a pretty sea-side city in Maryland. This place was pretty cool and you can see the British influence in the streets and buildings. (Not that I've been to Britian yet, but I'm guessing it might look something like this). Here’s a photo of me on Easy Street. The city is also known for it's crabs and one place was doing an all you can eat crab buffet for lunch which I think Warren was tempted by.


Philadelphia is one of the oldest cities in the US the architecture and history in the city is amazing. Over the day and half we were there we saw many historical sites such as the Liberty Bell and the first Congress building (where George Washington and John Adams were made the 2 first Presidents of the US).


However, the things that first came to our minds when we drove into Philly was Rocky and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. We drove past the building where Rocky ran up the stairs as part of his training so we got the video camera out and were all set to re-enact the scene but the tour bus just drove on past :-(

From Fresh Prince I learnt about Philly Cheesesteaks and had to have an authentic one. We walked all around the city looking for one and after a couple of hours found a small diner that served them. It was worth the wait as it was so delicious. I loved it so much that I got another one for breakfast the next morning from a street vendor. Louise took a photo of this which must have looked a little strange as a guy came and asked her if she was a journalist.

One thing we noticed about Phily was the number of African Americans. They are just like watching an episode of Ricky Lake – fingers pointing and necks swaying with their animated speech “whatttsup daaawg”. Very entertaining but I guess I should be careful not to stare!

Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls was the first destination on our Cosmos Tour. There are 42 of us on the tour, and we were warned that the average age would be about 40 - but it's more like 60! There are about 8 of us who can't share stories of our grandchildren so it's not so bad. Our group is mostly English but there are some Americans, Australians, South Africans, Malyasians and Kiwis. The Malaysians must be struggling a bit with English as on our second day we had to introduce ourselves to the rest of the group and say something about ourselves. The poor Malyasian lady had us all in hysterics when she said 'Hello, we are Lee and Ho Quang and we are alcoholics'. She was obviously confused by our amusement but this was soon followed by 'ohhh, I mean workoholics'...

Our tour guide and bus driver are Margaret and Bob. Margaret has had 2 hip replacements and reminds Warren of his Grandma. She started the tour with an over-enthusiastic American 'Gooood Maarwning everyone, isn't it a graaayt daaay', but as the tour has gone on, the cheesyness has lessened as she starts to look more frazzled. At least the jokes have subsided. As we passed the Niagara Falls Golf Course she told the group that it was a rule on the course that all golfers must wear 2 pairs of pants in case they got a hole in one. And the amazing thing was that people actually laughed at that!

Niagara Falls was a day's bus ride but well worth it. The Falls are magnificent and the rainbow that could be seen in the mists of the water kept me snapping away with the camera for ages. The mist can be seen from miles away. The highlight of the day would have to be the Maid of the Mist boat ride. The boat can be seen in the first photo, and that's us in the boat on the left. It goes right up to the bottom of the falls. From here you can really feel the thunderous power as the boat gets thrown around like a kid's toy in the torrents. It's not hard to understand why many of the idiotic daredevils who have thrown themselves overboard in barrels haven't lived to tell the story.

I have never before seen so many different nationalities and heard so many different languages as I have here. This place is trully multicultural. I even saw Amish for the first time, which confused me for a minute as I was looking around to see where the costume party was!

Our hotel was quite far away from the Falls and we heard that the Falls get lit up at night. We wanted to stay around for the lights so we had 8 hours to occupy. There was a street dubbed 'Clindon Hill- Street of Fun'. This was over-the-top blatant, cheesy tourism at it's best. There were Wax Museums, Haunted Houses, Frankensteins, Draculas and Games arcades. Not exactly the things you'd expect to see at Niagara Falls! We had time to kill so had a game of 'Dinosaur Mini-putt'. We were tied right up to the 17th hole but the pressure got to me and I lost it on the 18th - I'll blame it on the 28 degree heat.

For the rest of the day we just wandered around the gardens and the falls. I was pretty tired after walking around in the heat all day so was quite grumpy when our tour bus didn't stop to give us a ride back to the hotel. So it was another hour of walking.... at least the photos made it all worth it.