The Sparks went to Washington...: Our first visitors arrive!

Mum and Eve arrived safe and sound on Sunday! There was a bit of confusion over the flights...BA seem to have been being naughty and combining flights over the past few days. We were tracking the flight on both the BA and Dulles airport flight tracker...BA was saying 1 1/2 hours late, Dulles was saying on time (but we assumed that was because it wasn't in their airspace or something), then just after we set off for the airport their flight number disappeared from the Dulles system (I love my Blackberry for it's Internet capability!). There were a lot of confused people waiting for passengers and (of course!) no-one on the information desk to ask! I did find a colleague who had just flown in on the Virgin flight with his wife and kid (I think he was kind of surprised to see me!)...eventually the weary travellers appeared from customs at about 11pm. By the time we had found Stephen (who was in the car listening to baseball), loaded up the luggage, driven home, done the tour of the house, made a cuppa...it was nearly 1am before we got to bed!

We were up pretty early considering we were up late the night before. We headed off for a bit of a drive round Old Town, then hit Target for some retail therapy (everyone is overwhelmed by the general inexpensiveness of everything in the store!). We did more retail therapy in Pentagon City Mall, then headed off to Arlington Cemetery. It was the first time any of us had been, and it was a very beautiful, calm, well tended place. We walked around all of the must-do places...the Tomb of the Unknown Solider, the Eternal Flame marking JFK's grave...

Not looking our most glam!! Windswept and squinting at Gravelly Point.

The Eternal Flame

We headed out for dinner at Chadwicks, but after all the walking, the early start and the late night we were all pretty exhausted! We all pretty much collapsed at about 8:30! Mum and Eve were in bed at about 8:32!

We were back into work on Tuesday and Mum and Eve did the walking tour of Old Town, wandering up and down King Street doing some light shopping as they went!

Rodger, Bridget and baby Henry leave for the UK en-route to Australia tomorrow, so we had a really nice leaving lunch for them today. Hils came along too, and sent a text saying that I was to save a seat next to someone "normal"...well the best I could do was Colin and I, but I think that's about as normal as it gets in QQ!

Whilst we were stuffing our wee faces, the intrepid explorers were hoofing it round DC. Monuments, Museums...they did it all! They took Prof. Hector McSnecktor along with them too...he had a great time as you can see from the photos! He also gathered quite a lot of interest as he was being taken around!!

Everyone is exhausted tonight, so Mum and Stephen have gone off to forage for food. Actually they have gone to Chicken Out for a roasted chicken and some sides of coleslaw.