Out of many tourist attractions, One capital city.

My lonely planet book describes Washington as 'three M's: Monuments, Memorials and Museums, surrounding a fourth, the Mall.' This is exactly what I discovered. In practice this meant busy daytimes trying to see everything (more on that later...) and quiet nighttimes - because outside of the "M's" there really isnt anything to do! Not that it bothered me, I was so tired out from all the walking I was quite happy to sit down and play some serious board game action.

Of the stuff to see some of it is really spectacular. The Washington monument (pictured to the left after an unfortunate drinking session led to me trying to steal it) is a prime example. The whole thing has no frame - its just bricks and gravity holding that thing together. Its also hollow, meaning you can go up inside it, for free, and get an amazing view of Washington. As if that wasnt enough, it was followed up the next day by the Lincoln memorial. The picture really cant do this justice. From the Monument you walk past the reflecting pool up to a massive temple. On the day I was there the pool was frozen over, and featured several attempts to smash the ice in the form of large rocks on top of the ice... When you arrive at the temple you walk up the steps, and inside is the picture here.


Lincoln was a pretty inspiring character, and the memorial for me was the best thing I saw in Washington. The White house, Capitol hill, the Jefferson Memorial and the various war memorials were all impressive but I dont think anything else was quite as special.

Also at the mall are the Smithsonian museums, which as I was constantly reminded inside them are featured in Night at the Museum 2. These are a whole series of buildings, each a museum of some field. Arguably the coolest was the National Air and Space museum, which featured a whole load of Aircraft, Spaceships and science experiments. It even had vacuum frozen food for sale! One small problem I had there was that there is so much to see, by the end of each day I was really knackered from all the walking. This is something Im entirely blaming on the Smithsonian - I only managed to visit 3 of them, out of around 7, and each of them took between 4 and 5 hours to go through.

And then there were the board games... I'd never learned to play risk before I went to Washington, but I leave undefeated.