When I saw them come through the doors into the arrivals hall, I can't deny I got a bit teary. My oestrogen levels must have been through the roof. I honestly felt like I was some bewildered extra in a scene that had been cut from the end credits of Love Actually. Mum was running toward me; I was running into pillars and railings due to the watery blur forming in my eyeballs. It was all very straight-to-DVD family movie.
So we pulled ourselves together, reigned in our emotions like excitable sheep back in their pens, and headed back into DC. We spent the first few days going around DC, seeing all the sights; me acting like some kind of dubious tour guide from Slovenia who'd learnt about America from ancient episodes of Friends and Cheers; "...And here we have the Lincoln Memorial..." "Chlo I think that's the Jefferson Memorial." Womp. In my defence DC has so many bloody memorials it's pretty frackin' difficult to keep track, OK? These people surrriously heart their presidents.
We did a tour of the Capitol building, visited the National Museum of American History, the White House, Jazz in the Garden at the National Gallery of Art where I got pretty bungalowed on a few glasses of sangria (I think my mother was rather disappointed that she had somehow bred a daughter who couldn't hold her liquor satisfactorily) and my parents inevitably whipped out their (questionable) trademark dance moves. We did the Air and Space Museum - outside which Dad had one of the most difficult and perplexing experiences of buying a Diet Coke at a McDonald's that anyone has ever had, and I showed them my office and Georgetown.
We only had three days so couldn't fit everything in, so the time for us to pick up our hire car and hit the road came around fast. I somehow landed the role of navigator to our first stop in Front Royal, Virginia where we would join the Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park. This was perhaps an unwise choice considering my debatable ability to read a map. I eventually got us there after a lot of excitement about being on 'Route 66' (I even played the song and everything). Though we later came to realise (mostly through singing along with the song and it dawning on us that none of the place names were correlating, rather than actually having any tangible evidence) that 'Route 66' and 'Interstate 66', the latter of which we were using, are two different roads. *sadface*.
After a night spent in Front Royal, we hit the Skyline Drive which was beautiful. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how much of a scaredy-cat you are) we saw no black bears; the promise of which had previously hung oh-so tantalisingly in the air. We were rewarded only with a couple of deer on the side of the road - which Dad insisted he stop the car and photograph, despite England not actually being that short of deer itself. But apparently according to my father's somewhat abnormal rationale Virginian deer sightings are a rarity akin to spotting a puma loose on Tooting Broadway.
After the Skyline drive we went onwards to Williamsburg, one of the original British colonial towns back at the beginning of (American) time when we, the British, basically gave the yanks life all those 400 years ago (pfft...you're welcome, guys. Try being 1000 years old). It was a beautiful little place, full of people wandering around in old colonial dress and greeting each other as if they were actually still living in the 17th century. Makes for a somewhat incongruous experience trying to take a picture of them with your iPhone while they're doing needlepoint and making old-school jam in a big vat to choruses of "Good morrow, sir!"
Then it was onwards to Delaware for beaches and shopping. Unfortunately the weather had begun to take a turn for the worse so we were sceptical as to whether we'd get any opportunity at all to burn our pasty English bods in the fiery East Coast sun (unfortunately this doesn't apply to Dad who just turns an annoyingly nicer shade of brown, Mauritian chump). But miraculously, we had one day of perfect, cloudlessly sunny weather, and I was suitably burned enough to be satisfied with my UV exposure. So we spent the next couple of days shopping and chilling. The promise of sales tax-free goods was just too tantalising to ignore. And we rejoiced in the fact that if something was marked as being $8.99 - it actually fucking WAS $8.99. Heavens above and joy of joys. The bane of my FREAKING existence over here is repeatedly that prices are not what they first appear, and then suddenly you're that foreign arsehole holding up the queue scrabbling for extra quarters at the cash register. Oh and BY THE WAY, all American coins look EXACTLY the same, I have no idea how these people survive. For one - 5c coins are bigger than 10c coins - WHERE IS THE LOGIC IN THAT? Plus why there is no coin denomination above 25c is just beyond me. Is it only me who is stupefied by this? Or am I just going steadily insane? I guess we will never know - until I have tied a bag of those nonsensical coins to my feet and thrown myself in the ocean.
OK I've calmed down a bit now. A good rant will do that, I'm also pretty sure I've shed a few pounds of molten anger.
In summation, it was a wonderful holiday and I was really sad to see the parentals go. Now I'm seriously counting down the days until Graham gets here and we can have my 24th birthday/reunion celebrations. Everything is booked. The hotels, the trains, even the 3-hour Segway tour round DC. Oh yes, people. If you are having trouble imagining a scenario in which Graham and I are let loose on what are, essentially, motorised wheelbarrows - I refer you to the below documentary footage...
Stay tuned folks...I promise not to be so unacceptably tardy with my post next time.
Lots of love xx
