After a very sound sleep, I got up around 7.15 am and just when I was getting ready, NSM brought me coffee - it felt a little too awkward for couple of reasons - one, I am not used to somebody bringing in coffee for me and second, she it too elderly a person to be bringing in coffee. Well, it happened so and we spent nearly an hour talking about the some important issues - mostly comparing people’s attitude and approach towards life. Looking around, I realized that the locality had an ancient European outlook. I had another very rare item, Idli and Chatni, for breakfast. It looks like my tongue is getting a refresher course! Nagesh, who was back from an all night work just an hour ago, dropped me off at the bus station (route # 980 at 9.37 am). The day has got off to a great start - I reached the West Falls Church Station in about 15 minutes and got the next metro (Orange Line) to Smithsonian shortly afterwards.

After taking few pictures of the Washington Monument and The Hill Capital, I headed towards The Museum of Natural History. I misread National as Natural and got into The National Museum of National History. Like other museums that I have visited in other parts of the United States, this one too was extremely clean and tidy. After spending about an hour in this museum and eating my favorite SubWay item, I headed along the Constitution Avenue, 15th Street and saw the Department of Commerce, Treasury, frontal and rear view of The White House (which I nearly missed), World Bank — all in about one hour. Then, I went to the World War II Memorial (had some food, and copied the pictures to my computer), then to Lincoln Memorial (reflection of the Washington Monument in the Reflecting Pool was a treat to my eyes), Korean War Memorial, saw Jefferson Memorial from a distance and walked slowly along Independence Avenue, seeing some old-fashioned aesthetic looking architectural wonders (Department of Agriculture) and some new ones like Department of Energy and Transportation.

Santosh Karre called to see how I was doing and this felt good particularly because most of the desis who I had seen through out the day weren’t even returning the smile. Every museum bears Smithsonian in its name and when I got into the Air and Space Museum, I was shocked. It was very very big - so big that I thought I wouldn’t do any justice if I spent just one hour seeing the exhibits. I came out of it shortly and walked back towards the Smithsonian Station - I stopped to have Hot Chocolate in one the roadside outlets and copied the pictures from the camera to the computer (yes, again). I got into the train and reached West Falls Church around 5 pm. Nagesh was at the bus terminal to pick me up and we reached home around 5.45 pm or so. I was expecting that some officer would pull me over to the side to ask question but surprisingly no one did and I realized one thing for sure - seeing Washington DC in one day is just humanly impossible!!

I spent remainder of the evening watching TV, playing with the kid, eating (variety of good food - Pulav, Raitha, KaDubu, …) and watched couple of football games….