We changed our mind about travelling in Sachin's car on 29th Jun morning.
Late on 28th night, Sachin decided that we would travel by a SUV since all the luggage wouldn't fit in the car.
He googled priceline.com, a website that actually allows you to bid for hiring a car at rates that are far cheaper than the published rates.The bid was accepted and he was told to pick up the car at Raleigh/Durham Airport on 29th Jun at 10 AM.
Meanwhile, Mohan who was our neighbour in Teynampet, Chennai dropped in on 29th morning to see us.Sudha had prepared Avalakki Oggarane and we had this with curd for breakfast.It was nice to see Mohan after all these years.
Sudha, Madhura and I went to the airport at 10.30 AM and Sachin picked up a nice SUV. We transferred some of the already loaded luggage from Sachin's car to the SUV, transferred the precious GPS and the Insurance papers, had our lunch and then left for Washington at around 1 PM.
I felt a little sad at leaving Cary after spending such a wonderful 2 weeks .We hit I 95 and the miles just rolled by. The scenery was the same---- a highway in the middle with forests on both sides. We soon crossed into Virginia State and then stopped over at Starbbucks for coffee and tea.The thindi bags came out one by one and got polished off.
We crossed Richmond,Fredericksburg, Petersburg, Williamsburg--- all towns that were famous in the American Civil War since Virginia was on the side of the Condederate States and where famous battles were fought.
We reached Washington at around 6.30 PM.There was plenty of bright sunlight left and we thought we'd see the Washington Monument first.Unfortunately, ticket sales had closed so we couldn't go up the Monument.We then parked the car nearby and walked through the World War II Memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial and went to the Lincoln Memorial. This was Sudha's first visit to Washington while Sachin , Madhura and I had already been here in Nov 2008.We spent a good amount of time in the Lincoln Memorial and then went down the National Mall, parked the car and walked up to the White House.
Pennsylvania Avenue, Constitution Avenue, Massachussets Avenue, Connecticut Avenue, Independence Avenue--- we walked through them all.
It was now around 9.30 PM and we were very hungry.We decided to have dinner at an Indian Restaurant before checking in at The Renaissance in Washington Downtown where we had made our reservations.
As soon as we walked into the restaurant, we got the shock of our life. We saw a hugely built African American policeman inside and he was putting the handcuffs on a person who appeared to be either the owner or the manager of the restaurant. More surprising was the fact that there were a couple of patrons inside having their meal and carrying on as if nothing was happening.
We almost lost our appetite then and were wondering whether we should go to another hotel. Finally, hunger won over and we decided to have our meal then.Discreet enquiries later revealed that the hotel was serving liquor even though they had no license and that was why the person was being arrested.One more American experience for this blog!!!!
The food was delicious--- parathas, roti, baingan bhartha, pulau, mango lassi and plain lassi.
We then drove up to the hotel, checked in, asked for a 3 PM check-out and crashed.
End of Day 19 while Sudha was musing over the day's events.
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