Whitehouse black sniper

I arrived in DC and got that ‘arriving in San Fran’ feeling all over again. Sketchy neighbourhood, lots of sirens (which were to be a recurring theme during my three days in DC.) This time though, I put on my big girl knickers and just toughened up. I could have spent my first afternoon and night holed up in the spare room of Ayeh’s house, or I could go out exploring. With only a week before I had to head back to OZ, I wasn’t going to waste any more time being a big sooky-la-la.

I walked from Ayeh’s house to the subway at 4.30pm with vague plans to go to the National Mall, maybe the Whitehouse. In the fifteen minute walk to the subway, I was the only person ‘without’ colour that I saw. It was such a contrast from so much of the America I had already experienced.

I bought a subway ticket and minutes later popped up at the Navy monument. I wandered down in the general direction of the Whitehouse and stumbled across the Hoover Building – FBI headquarters – completely by accident. There’s something a little bit James Bond about peering at the security tagged employees emerging from the Hoover Building – after all, they’re FBI. They do however, look absolutely nothing like James Bond (any of the versions). They look mostly like geeky CITEC employees (Kieran, naturally I don’t mean you).

I continued walking along Pensvylvania Avenue and soon I was again face to face with another iconic slice of Americana – the Whitehouse, with black snipers. Since 9/11 I understand that security is a big deal in the US, but black snipers on the Whitehouse? Way to go to ruin a good photograph!

I snapped lots of images of bright blue sky contrasting the gleaming white structure of the Whitehouse with black suited spidermen toting machine guns darting around on the roof. Personally, I think they should get the Whitehouse snipers some white uniforms. I’m surprised nobody else has thought of this yet. Think about it. For starters, it would my much cooler in summer, it would be much better for tourist photographs, and to a certain extent, they’d be camouflaged, which surely would aid in their task, don’t you think? I wonder if Obama has fixo-grams? Perhaps I should send this in to the Whitehouse suggestion box?

After a few photos it was starting to get dark, and being a traveling day, I was starving due to my self-imposed ban on crappy, overpriced airport food. I decided on dinner at a place called Poets and Busboys, a famous bookstore slash restaurant slash political meeting point which was unfortunately 20 blocks away – but I needed the exercise. After a delicious meal of meatloaf and iced tea I was back at Ayeh’s place.

Ayeh is another lovely airb’n’b host – my last for this trip. Strangely not crazy, not even odd. Just a sweet Iranian born overeachiever. She’s working for a think tank in DC while also completing her PhD in Economics. Like I said, classic overachiever. The only things she had in common with the other Airb’n’b hosts was the whole no cooking thing – and the stove-top kettle (which Missy explained to me in Texas is due to the fact that they all have coffee makers and don’t drink tea – so the kettle is really a decorative piece rather than a functional kitchen gadget).