Trail of The Lonesome Pine
In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Susan makes landfall aboard Discovery at Jamestown. We noted the chequered history of the brits, through to seeing the actual documents of the Declaration of Independance and the Constitution (as amended) in DC no less ! 
Williamsburg is a very cool preservation, startling in scale plus it's bona fide. The Queen stayed at the Williamsburg Inn recently and it was on the telly :-) made for most interesting chat with the excellent barman there, of course :-) 
The Blue Ridge Mountains are blue with ridges - this seemed to surprise Doug though :-) We finally got a copy of Spencer's Mountain, the basis of the Walton's tv series, and visited the ancestral home of the Hamners upon which the book was based, sort of a personal pilgrimage for Susan and was good to do. Good night John-boy :-))
We rest our case at the US Supreme Court
This time we took our case to the steps of the US Supreme Court in Washington DC. Here's Susan on the steps, but we forgot to bring the case (again), so the moment passed (again).......;-)
We really enjoyed DC. Doug fell asleep near the spot MLK delivered his 'I have a dream' speech, and had a dream of his own :-) The Smithsonian museums are brilliant, its worth spending at least three years there. Tip: take good walking shoes. Great Zoo. Saw the Wizards win from 4 points down with 5 seconds remaining, that was a miracle.
Also good bars in rougher bits like Adams-Morgan, such as 'Madam's Organ' http://www.madamsorgan.com/ and 'The Big Hunt' http://www.thebighuntdc.com/ in Dunlap Circle were worthy of revisiting. It's a tough place though, DC and even seasoned taxi travellers such as ourselves were ripped off. Met some nice locals in bars who helped it all make sense. We'll be back :-)
Young and Foolish
Susan in NYC celebrating a significant birthday in some fair style :-) lunch at the Rainbow Room, Bellinis at Harry's, evening at the Met, what a fab day ! As part of the 'birthday festival' we also discovered the John Campbell apartment bar - now that's a well kept secret - plus the original Smith & Wollensky's, Charlie Palmers', and some old favourites like I Tre Merli. We could live comfortably in NYC. Most of the good things in life are a short taxi ride away, and there are just so many taxis. The Waldorf treated us very nicely, we should say.
They have Noel Coward's piano, I hope he doesn't need it back :-)Was great to live it up in style for a while. The Rainbow Room is a private club for lunch, so did well to get in there, it is quite a compact dance club on the top of the Rockafeller building, where Fred Astair et al did their stuff. The lunch was maginificent. Also tried out some dodgy jazz clubs like Swing 46. 
Here's Susan at the Met, where we saw 'Peter Grimes' well done indeed. Have to say we can now rank our fave world opera houses, which is getting a tad pretentious don't you think? :-) Happy birthday, sweet 16 xxxxxx
In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Susan makes landfall aboard Discovery at Jamestown. We noted the chequered history of the brits, through to seeing the actual documents of the Declaration of Independance and the Constitution (as amended) in DC no less ! 
Williamsburg is a very cool preservation, startling in scale plus it's bona fide. The Queen stayed at the Williamsburg Inn recently and it was on the telly :-) made for most interesting chat with the excellent barman there, of course :-) 
The Blue Ridge Mountains are blue with ridges - this seemed to surprise Doug though :-) We finally got a copy of Spencer's Mountain, the basis of the Walton's tv series, and visited the ancestral home of the Hamners upon which the book was based, sort of a personal pilgrimage for Susan and was good to do. Good night John-boy :-))
