JonStarbuck.co.uk

I am spending a little time in Washington DC right now, I am mainly revising for a university exam (on solar PV, thermal and passive - on the CREST course - since you ask) in two weeks or so, but also taking in a few of the sights.

Washington feels small and relatively quiet, especially for a capitol city, but the regular low passage of giant helicopters across the centre of the city and the scores of embassies here remind me about the primary business of the city; the governance of the richest nation on Earth.

There is tones for the cheapskate tourist and shoestring traveler to do here with dozens of very-high-quality free museums and free art galleries.

Among a load of other places, we visited the holocaust museum; I was obviously very moved, but also quite impressed with myself in that I could happily say I did not learn all that much new stuff, I felt it could have done with (and there is always something with me) some sort of representation of the shear scale that is six-million dead as I don’t feel many people have much of an idea of the magnitude of the number, and ditch the crappy antisemitism video which detracted from the rest of the experience.

We also visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall and viewed the fifty-eight-thousand names on it (a mere 100th of what died at the hands of the Nazis, and yet a extraordinarily long list of names), seeking out the only Starbuck on it; Robert French Starbuck.

We did some other touristy things like visiting the Washington Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Hirshhorn Museum, ……… and a load more, see my Washington photos on Flickr……. I’ll be rewarding myself for having done lots of revision with more trips out later in the week.