Washington, D.C. 2025 (PART ONE)

[Adapted from email travelogue, sent Tuesday, June 10 at 9:27 p.m.] Wednesday, June 4 The Library of Congress The Library of Congress wasn't even really on my radar, but then Marie at work told me about how impressive it was—and we all know, I love to explore a beautiful library! And indeed, this one has the largest library collection in the world. (There is some hair splitting about this claim, it should be noted: often cited as having the "largest collection of books" in the world, there's a good chance the British Library has a larger collection. Depending on how much you care about the source, though, the Guiness Book of World Records cites the Library of Congress as having the largest catalogue in the world—noting that their catalogue includes all sorts of shit (I'm paraphrasing). Anyway, I then made the Library of Congress the fifth and final timed-entry tour or ticket I managed to book in advance of this trip. Shobhit and I took the red-eye direct from Seattle to Dulles Airport outside Washington, D.C. on Tuesday night, and we got to our hotel at maybe 7:30 a.m. to drop off our bags so we could roam around the city, pretty exhausted after having low-quality sleep on the plane (which was only about one-third booked), until we could check in at our hotel. The Library of Congress, a three-mile walk from our hotel, was our first stop. Pictured above is the Main Reading Room, which we had to get separate, special tickets for and get in line to go inside, quietly, for only about five minutes in groups of about twenty. This is a functioning library, but you have to get a library card and only with that can you gain access to spaces like this outside of organized tours. In fact, only this room and the Thomas Jefferson's Library exhibit even had shelves of books in any of the spaces of our tour—well, and the gift shop, of course. The rest of the tour was all about the beautiful building, but I had no complaints about that!

Supreme Court of the United States I was correct in assuming Shobhit would like to see the Supreme Court, and conveniently, that building is right next door to the Library of Congress. At the end of this ostentatious corridor is the Court Chamber—where, historically, a lot of progress has happened, and also (notably recently), a lot of bullshit has happened! The main entrance to the building was behind where I stood to get this shot. There are no timed-entry tours to book for this building, although we did discover that at certain times of the day, someone taks groups of people inside the Chamber, when court is not in session (and it was not at this time). We were already done seeing anything else there was to see, though, and we'd have had to wait 45 minutes, so we moved on.

Georgetown: C&O Canal Towpath When we first took the Washington Metro train from Dulles Airport to the station at Foggy Bottom (I was relieved we didn't have to get off at Swamp Ass), I learned that Foggy Bottom is the Washington, D.C. neighborhood our hotel is in. Adjacent to the west is the historic Georgetown, and I found some points of interest to explore, which we did after getting back to our hotel at about 1:30. We rested a while; I even took a nap; and we headed out for another long walk at about 6:45. Georgetown points of interest I had on my list were Georgetown Waterfront Park on the Potomac River, which I happened to see on Google Maps was not far from our hotel; the "Exorcist Steps"; and, pictured above, the C&O Canal. I had seen multiple references online to boat tours you can take on this canal, which stretches 184.5 miles into western Maryland north of West Virginia. But, once we got to the point in the canal closest to us, we found it drained and with some kind of construction going on. Only some distance further west did we find even this spot where we could actually see some water in it—which happened to be very close to The Exorcist Steps. That works!

Arlington / Theodore Roosevelt Island All of about a thousand feet from The Exorcist Steps is the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge over to Arlington, Virginia. Shobhit had yet to literally set foot on the ground in Virginia (we're not counting riding in from the airport), so it took little convincing to walk across the bridge. Plus, he had seen the 89-acre Theodore Roosevelt Island on his Maps app and was interested in checking it out. So, we did. This view is looking back down on the island from Theodore Roosevelt Bridge at its south end, which is also Interstate 66. We made this walk a large circle, through Georgetown and across one bridge, back across another bridge and on back to our hotel. This walk alone was about four miles.

The River Inn I took this shot of our hotel, The River Inn, upon returning from that last walk. It has nine floors, and we requested a high floor—and got the top one! (Ours was floor 8, but this one goes up one to start counting.)

Website photos show a lot of city views out windows, but of course make no note of how many views are blocked by a building right across the street—we'd have had better luck with a room at the side of the building, which were probably more expensive. I was just grateful to get a top floor at all, and if you stood close to our window and to the left, there was still somewhat of a view. So where did I get the above shot from, then? From the roof! There is no way I was supposed to be allowed out there, so don't tell anyone. The hotel has purified water dispensers on floors 3 and 6, so we frequently went down to 6 to refill our water bottles. On one such trip—this was actually on Saturday—I decided to use the stairs rather than wait for the elevator (something few people besides myself would bother to do). I noticed another flight up, with natural light coming in, so I went up to investigate: there was a couple of windows! You could see the Rosslyn skyline in Arlington, as well as part of The Potomac, flowing underneath the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge we had walked across. Naturally I took a couple of photos. That had been in the morning, though, before we first ventured out to experience the World Pride Parade (you'll get to learn more about that in Part Two). When we got back, at abut a quarter after 10:00, I wanted to go back and get some night shots. Shobhit went with me. This time, I thought to check and see if the window would slide open. I was shocked to find that not only it did, but there was no screen! The bottom of the window was barely below waist height, so I stepped right out there to get better pictures than I'd have gotten through the glass. (There were still railings and a pretty wide roof area—even a door, but which was locked. Lucky for me, no one thought to lock the window.)

Thursday, June 5 U.S. Capitol Tour Next on our list of pre-booked, timed-entry tours, and first on the agenda Thursday—after our first good night's sleep—on this trip was the tour of the U.S. Capitol. Just like with central-branch libraries, you know me and capitols! I must tour them. Here's the thing, though. I don't regret doing this tour, I'm glad I did it. But, mostly just so I can check it off my list. The tour only took us through three rooms in the building: the Crypt; the Rotunda; and the National Statuary Hall. I did get some beautiful shots I wouldn't have otherwise, and the first room, the Crypt, was the most interesting to me—it's what's pictured above, a tomb intended for George Washington but which remains empty because his family buried him at Mount Vernon, Virginia (not to be confused with Mount Vernon in Washington State) in accordance with his wishes. The thing that stuck out to me most, though, was the key difference between the National Capitol and any of the State Capitol buildings: by necessity, the lack of any local flavor. It has plenty of symbolism in its architecture and decor, of course, but none of the regional pride and symbolism invariably found in State Capitols, which is consistently what makes them so much more interesting to me.

Bureau of Engraving and Printing Tour And then, after the Capitol, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing tour. This is one many people probably don't think to do, but I knew Shobhit would be interested because he loves money! (So does my dad—economics is often a favorite topic between him and Shobhit—but Dad has lost any affection for large cities in his later years, and won't likely be visiting Washington, D.C.) Anyway, Shobhit did try to say "We already did this, in Denver," but in Denver is a mint, the distinction being a mint is where coins are made, and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is where banknotes (paper money) are made. My photo album for this tour is much smaller—10 shots—than any other album I have for this trip (25 of them!) because they would only allow photos in the foyer before the tour starts or in the gift shop after it ends—no photos of the printing equipment allowed, because it would aid counterfeiters. I took the above photo before noticing the sign on the wall that reads, in part, Photos, videos, and audio recordings are prohibited. Oops! This was during the introductory video we sat through, and then the tour guide got on a microphone and said that if anyone took out their phones to take a photo during the tour, they might have to disrupt the tour by bringing in the police, who will confirm the photo has been deleted. There was a moment when Shobhit took out his phone without thinking, just to check the time, and the tour guide started to gesture toward him right when he said "Sorry" and put it back in his pocket. "No worries," she said, which was slightly ironic I think.

National Mall Memorials After the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, we did something Shobhit really wanted to do: walk around and see the many memorials dotted around the west end of the National Mall, to the west and to the south of the Washington Monument. We walked from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, around the body of water just off the Potomac River called the Tidal Basin, and around the west end of the National Mall before heading back to the hotel. We stopped at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial (built 1943), which is on the far side of the Tidal Basin from the Mall; the surprisingly extensive Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial (built 1997); the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial (built 2011); the Korean War Veterans Memorial (built 1995, with Wall of Remembrance added 2022); the Lincoln Memorial (built 1922); the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (built 1982); and the Vietnam Women's Memorial (built 1993). All told, the route from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to the Vietnam Women's Memorial alone was about two miles, and took us around ninety minutes. I should note that we also visited the World War II Memorial (built 2004, at the opposite end of the Reflecting Pool from the Lincoln Memorial); and the District of Columbia War Memorial (built 1931), but we did both of those with a bit of extra time before the Bureau of Engraving and Printing tour. Anyway! Some of these memorials have more striking design elements than others, particularly the Martin Luther King Jr. statue, and, pictured above, the "On Patrol" sculptures of the Korean War Veterans Memorial, depicting American ground troops in Korea. There are 19 statues, but when reflected in the polished granite wall next to them, they double to 38, representing the 38th parallel that divides North and South Korea.

9/11 Pentagon Memorial Another point of interest that wasn't even on my radar but which I was all about when Shobhit suggested it: the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial (built 2008), back across the Potomac in Arlington, and in fact directly adjacent to The Pentagon itself. This memorial has 184 benches, each with the name of the 184 people who died in the attack on The Pentagon on September 11, 2001. They are lined up in rows by year of birth, the oldest being 1930 (71 years old) and the youngest 1998 (3 years old). We took the Washington Metro train out just to see this, and found it totally worth it. I was thinking that had we gone out earlier we could have gone to the Pentagon Visitor Center, but it turns out that one also requires booking in advance (and, much like the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, no photography allowed—in fact with this one you must "leave all electronic devices before entering the facilities"). So, I'll just put this on the list for when I might visit Washington, D.C. in another fifteen years, I guess. Still, I really tried to get some good exterior shots of The Pentagon, which was difficult because that building is massive—not extremely tall (77 feet / 23 meters, 5 floors but the equivalent of 6.4 floors of an average office building) but incredibly wide, at 1,414 feet (431 meters). Each of its five sides is 921 feet long (281 m), so much like laying five 77-story buildings end to end on their sides to make the shape of a pentagon. From its completion in 1943 until 2023 it was the world's largest office building, with more square feet of floor space than any other. (It was overtaken by the Surat Diamond Bourse building in Surat, Gujarat, India—which boasts 7.1 million square feet (660,000 square meters) of floor space as compared to The Pentagon's 6.5 million square feet (600,000 sq m)). I walked up a nearby grassy hill and managed to get this shot, but still could not even see the roof; at least I later got this shot out the window of the plane we flew out of Reagan National Airport on our way home.

Friday, June 6 Washington Monument My favorite thing we did this whole trip! And you can't actually see the Washington Monument in this photo—you can, however, see the Thomas Jefferson Memorial on the far side of the Tidal Basin—because the photo was taken from the Washington Monument. At the top! Getting these tickets were by far the biggest challenge—even more so than getting White House tour tickets, which, strangely, you have to coordinate with one of your Congressional representatives (either the Representative from your U.S. House District or one of your Senators; I did that one through Representative Pramila Jayapal's office)—of any I managed to get for this trip. I didn't even get these tickets in advance, much as I tried: if you have a target date for when you want to go, tickets are released one month in advance online, and another 30 are released at 10 a.m. Eastern every day one day prior. I tried both of these approaches, two different times each, to no avail—tickets disappear quickly. We spoke to a park ranger at the Washington Monument (which, incidentally, is part of the National Parks system) on Thursday and she told us there are people who use AI to swoop in and grab huge swaths of tickets at a time and then attempt to sell them later, even though they are actually free. But, she said, 250 same-day tickets are released every morning at 8:45, and she recommended we get in line at least by 8:00 if we wanted to go that route. It should come as no surprise to you that I am committed, and I don't mind waiting an hour in line for things. My only concern here was having to get up that early, as it meant getting out of bed at least by 6 a.m. Eastern, which is 3 a.m. Pacific. I had fairly acclimated to the time difference, though, and when I woke up and saw the clock around 6 a.m., I hopped right out of bed. By the time both of us were ready to walk the two miles from our hotel, we had enough time to get there and in line by 7:55 a.m. There were 26 people in line ahead of us, each with the ability to claim up to 6 tickets—we were safe; the ticket window opened on schedule at 8:45; and we snagged tickets for the earliest slot at 9 a.m.! I was beyond thrilled. The Washington Monument is by a wide margin the tallest structure, excluding things like radio or TV towers in Washington, D.C., at 555 feet (169 m), and is only partly the reason everything else in D.C. is so much shorter: the Height of Buildings Act of 1899 established that no building could be taller than the Capitol (289 ft / 88 m), and the Height of Buildings Act of 1910 further restricted heights to no more than 20 ft taller than the width of the street it faces. The Washington Monument pre-dates all of this, having been constructed between 1848 and 1888 (with a hiatus 1854-1877 due to the Civil War), and so does the Old Post Office Pavilion (we'll discuss this later), and the Act has been updated a few times to grant minor exceptions depending on the circumstance and the location. But overall, the city has maintained the height restrictions to preserve the "light and airy" character envisioned of the city by Thomas Jefferson. The result of all this, to this day, is a city skyline not only muted for a city its size: 702,000 in the city proper (compare to 781,000 in Seattle) and a metropolitan population of 6.3 million (7th-largest in the nation; compare to metro Seattle's 4 million, ranked 15th)—but truly unique and unusual. Almost all of Washington, D.C.'s downtown buildings are 12 or 13 stories tall; the only things sticking noticeably above them are the Washington Monument (555 ft / 169 m) near the west end of the National Mall; the U.S. Capitol (289 ft / 88 m) at the east end of the National Mall; and in the middle just north of the Mall in downtown, the Old Post Office Pavilion (with the clock tower, 315 ft / 96 m). Only the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception stands shorter than the Washington Monument but taller than the Old Post Office, its tower standing at 329 ft (100 m), but that stands about three and a half miles northeast of the Washington Monument. In any case, downtown Washington is barely recognizable as such compared to dozens of other, far taller cities, though it's an interesting experience walking down streets that create strangely uniform corridors of buildings as far as the eye can see that are all basically the same height.

White House Tour Hey, check it out, it's where the President watches movies! There are so many photos I could have chosen to share from the White House tour, but I chose this for what should be obvious reasons: I love a movie theater! Presumably this was where President Clinton watched Independence Day, which he did before the film was even released. The first movie President Fuckwit screened here, in his first term, was Finding Dory, a perfectly good if lower-tier Pixar film that still seems apropos for an overgrown man-child with a pathological aversion to being challenged. Did I go a little overboard there? I don't give a shit! Anyway, this was my third visit to Washington, D.C., each of them spaced many years apart: first was late April and early May 2000, during which time Bill Clinton was still president; the second time was 10 years later, 2010, when Barack Obama was president. Only on my third visit, 15 years after that, have I managed a White House tour, and it happened to be when, let's say, not-my-favorite person from not-my-favorite party is president (oh, now I get diplomatic). I've spoken to multiple people who have said they would not want to set foot in the White House right now, but I had no interest in that mindset, for two reasons: First, when the hell will I get another chance? I may visit D.C. again one day, and I may not—or it could even be far enough into the future when things are far worse (let's hope they aren't, but you know, whatever). Second, and far more importantly, the White House, what it stands for, and especially its history are things that transcend our current president, or any president for that matter. It was still really interesting, the relatively few rooms we actually got to go through notwithstanding, and I'm really glad I got to do it. I even bought a White House Christmas Tree ornament that is only sold at that gift shop: "Your friends are going to have ornament envy!" the cashier said. Hardly likely, but still fun to think about. (They also sold ornaments specific to the current president, but those belong in a toilet.)

Old Post Office Clock Tower Oh, look—there's the Washington Monument! This time, as seen from the 270-foot (82 m) observation deck of the Old Post Office's 315-foot Clock Tower. It's too bad I don't have the space to show you the beautiful exterior of this 1899 building, so I guess you'll just have to click here to see it. As you may have guessed, it originally opened as a post office, but that moved to a building next to Union Station in 1914. The Old Post Office housed government offices for the next 40 years; by 1973, after some years of neighborhood redevelopment plans threatened demolition, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It reopened with federal offices and retail spaces in 1983; and by 2016 it was repurposed as a hotel—first as the Trump International Hotel Washington D.C. (barf), then, as of 2022, the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, which it remains now. The clock tower has its own entrance in the back, with no ticket requirement. It's super easy and totally worth doing. As for the red-roofed structures seen between the Old Post Office and the Washington Monument in the photo? That appears to be the Clinton Federal Building (with the curve), Environmental Protection Agency buildings beyond to the left, and Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center to the right. So, four buildings, actually.

Renwick Gallery Shout out to my friend Karen, who recommended the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum—a smaller museum across the street and on the same block as the White House, which focuses on crafts. By chance, when Shobhit and I went in, the main exhibition, on display through June 22, was "We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts by Black Women Artists." The piece pictured here is The Little Rock Nine, by Sandra Noble, depicting nine African American students who forced the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. There is some very cool stuff in the gallery's permanent exhibits too.

Apple Carnegie Library Shout out to my friend Karen, again! She also told me about the Carnegie Library, built in 1903 as Washington, D.C.'s central branch library. Now, however, the main floor is an Apple Store, making the building "Apple Carnegie Library," which it has been since 2019. There are historic photos on display in the basement level, where the bathrooms are; the second floor houses the DC History Center.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library The Washington, D.C. central library outgrew the Carnegie building, resulting in the library moving into the then-new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, just four blocks away, in 1972. Didn't I mention my love of exploring libraries, especially central-branch libraries with architectural significance? The blocky exterior design of this building doesn't seem all that significant to my untrained eye, but the interior is very cool—most significantly the top floor, which features public access to a rooftop terrace garden! Does your library have that? Probably not! It was part of a $211 million renovation that opened in 2020.

Ford's Theatre Another thing that had not been on my radar but occurred to Shobhit we should do: visit Ford's Theatre, where Abraham Lincoln was shot. This also has ticketed tours, again for free (as a great many of the museums and points of interest like this in D.C. are), and we managed to snag tickets for 2:30. The tour started with the theatre itself, which is still in operation but currently in the off season, with the balcony where Lincoln was shot shrouded in flags. There's a framed photo of George Washington mounted up there, which seemed a bit odd to me—isn't that the wrong president? Turns out it's actually been up there since before Lincoln was shot, and was in fact hung on the night of his visit, an 1865 precursor to the Presidential Seal, to add gravitas to the then-current President's visit. This was done by the theatre's namesake, John T. Ford, who did the same with the flags. Thus, while I found myself assuming the Presidential Box was decorated thus in memory of Lincoln, it's actually preserved the way it was decorated for his arrival. The tour also included a walk across the street to "The Petersen House," where Lincoln was carried after being shot, and where he died the next morning.

Monday, June 9 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Shobhit isn't usually one for museums, but I guess a place like Washington, D.C. changes people's mind about them, even if only temporarily. His suggestion, largely to my surprise, was the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In retrospect, the interest stemmed from the parallels he sees (like many others) between the Nazi rise to power and what's happening on the right in the U.S. today. Granted, the bonkers comparisons by many on the right of Obama to Hitler doesn't exactly lend weight to this perspective, but I would argue that it's certainly relevant that Nazi ideals were far-right ideals, they weren't leftist ones. This museum smartly avoids any direct comparisons to the present, leaning on lessons we should learn from history. But there's no way I can avoid mentioning the kind of nuts thing that happened when we passed through security to enter, which did not happen anywhere else: we had two straw-lid tumbler bottles, now empty, in a bag, and a woman at the security check asked us to take a sip out of both of them. I said, "That's new," and she replied, "“You would not believe the crazy stuff people try to bring in to destroy the exhibits.” As in, they wanted us to drink to prove it’s not paint, or worse. I said, "That's a sad reflection of the kind of museum this is," and proof that the sentiments that precipitated the Holocaust are far from relegated to the past. Even when we left once we were done, we passed an "In Memoriam" photo of Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns, who died at the museum in 2009 when an antisemite shot him in the torso as soon as Johns opened the front door for him, before a couple other guards opened fire on the gunman and killed him before anyone else there could be killed. This is among many plots to attack the museum over the years. In the photo above, the inscription below the fire reads, Here lies earth gathered from death camps, concentration camps, sites of mass execution, and ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, and from cemeteries of American soldiers who fought and died to defeat Nazi Germany.

National Museum of African American History and Culture I had long heard so many great things about the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened only 9 years ago, in 2016, that this was actually at the top of my list of things to see this visit to Washington, D.C. (yes, even higher than the Washington Monument! though I won't deny that one was a very close second). The museum is, of course, amazing. The permanent exhibits, which do a spectacular job of contextualizing the ancestral history of present-day African Americans with the transatlantic slave trade through the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras, are so packed with information it's almost overwhelming—yet deeply engaging, sobering, in many cases tactile. These exhibits occupy three levels that go beneath the ground floor, and you go to the bottom floor (which was packed with people—hence the need for timed-entry tickets, which are not needed at many of the other major museums) and work your way up. Then there are three levels above ground, which house more cultural and temporary exhibits, ranging from history with more specific context (there's an incredible 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre exhibit) to art exhibits. We were inside the museum for a solid three hours, and we explored all six levels, but kind of rushed through some of them, especially the upper floors. Like so many of the museums on the National Mall, you could go back many times and ingest plenty of new information. If I ever do go back to visit Washington, D.C. again, however long it may be, this museum will again be at the top of my list, as I would absolutely go back. I also feel compelled to note that I love the architecture of the building, which unsurprisingly was designed with a great deal of intention. The structure, as you can see above, is especially beautiful at night.

National Museum of American History This one was a bit of an afterthought, and we spent barely more than an hour there: the National Museum of American History. I particularly wanted Shobhit to see the Hall of American Culture, where, arguably most famously, Archie Bunker's chair from All in the Family remains on display, as it has since 1978. Shobhit has never even heard of All in the Family, and I do wonder if we should bother finding it to watch or if maybe it hasn't aged well—I honestly have no idea. It also occurred to me that, with these chairs on display for 47 years, how many young Americans even know what it is now. I had only been to this museum once before, during my visit in 2000, 25 years ago. Of course this means a lot of stuff fro, the past decade and a half has been added—most memorably, to me, Walter White's hazmat suit from Breaking Bad. We skimmed through many of the other "Halls" and exhibits at this museum, including "Americans at War: the Price of Freedom," which included the display pictured above, designed to illustrate the Vietnam War being the first American war to unfold live on television.

VUE Rooftop Bar / Olio E Piú Italian Trattoria Our last night in Washington, D.C. was Monday night, and at my suggestion, we walked back down to the Lincoln Memorial—one mile south of our hotel—to view it at night, and view the Washington Monument from there after dark. After that, even though we had already had some lentils and rice at the hotel (as usual, we packed a lot of food to make in the hotel room we booked with a kitchen, so we would not have to blow exorbitant amounts of money eating out for every meal), we set out in search of a nice place to have a snack—or, really, what turned out to be a second dinner. The first place we checked out was VUE, a rooftop restaurant only a couple of blocks from the National Mall and the White House, with views of both. We went in to check out the menu at this popular 11th-floor place, but the kitchen was closing in 5 minutes—but, not too soon for me to get several pictures! From there, we made our way one block to the northeast (this meant walking two blocks), to an "Italian Trattoria" that apparently opened just this past October, Olio E Piú (translated from Italian: Oil and More). We did go to 13 different restaurants and cafes over the past week for anything ranging from snacks to desserts to full meals, actual meals covering only five of them—Olio E Piú being easily the most expensive of them. But damn, was it worth it! The eggplant ravioli was truly incredible, and my Watermelon Spritz rivaled the best cocktails I've ever had (our server told us they sell a lot of them). We asked our server to take this photo of us, our dinner out on our last night in Washington, D.C.

. . . And so concludes Part One! I just spent our entire five-hour flight home, and the Light Rail ride to downtown Seattle from the airport (using my iPhone as a personal hotspot), writing up this travelogue. I'm so tired from the many hours of work I put into this, I'm going to send it out without proofing for typos and errors. So you're just going to have to deal with those. And if you're one of the presumably five or so people who actually read this from beginning to end, congratulations! You have my respect and appreciation. Just wait until Part Two! Actually that one will only cover two and a half days of World Pride events whereas this one covered three and a half days of sightseeing, and presumably the captions in Part Two won't be so collectively massive. But I suppose we'll just have to wait and see. I know the suspense is killing you!