Finally time to check out of the George and leave DC. Did remarkably little sight-seeing, but its ok, since I’ve seen a fair bit when I was last here, and Randall says everything is shown on Discovery Channel anyway. But at least we tried many Asian restaurants while we were here. And we returned to the hand-made noodle restaurant for another plate of fried noodles and steamed dumplings (at 1030am, no less) before retrieving the car from Franconia-Springfield. Somewhere didn’t seem to have to pay for the parking cos the barricade was up when we left [and we didn’t scan anything when we entered].

We couldn’t quite decide whether to go back via Tennessee or to go north via Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana instead. We however did stumble onto Mount Vernon, George Washington’s residence before and after his presidency – where he made his name as a successful agriculturalist (and later as a soldier) and also where he died –> from suffocation after an abcess in his throat prevented him from breathing. The view of the Potomac River from his mansion was awesome, although I didn’t care for the shades of green he used on his walls [although these were supposedly expensive dyes from Europe].

The rain was not too heavy, but combined with the piercing winds, was really quite painful, and drove us into the comfort of the restaurant pretty soon. Tried the fried green tomatoes, which was misleading cos it was basically baked green tomatoes with mozarella cheese on top. The salmon cakes were decent, but unspectacular. Randall’s vegetable “gratin” was a variation of the tomatoes, with cheese on top of mixed vegetables baked for 10 mins in the oven.

Decided to call it a day early at 4 cos we were stuck in traffic in Alexandria, VA with little hope of making any significant progress today — after all, people were going to be pouring onto the roads soon as the work day ends. So we turned into the Red Roof Inn that happened to be next to us and looked decent. It was expensive as we did not have any coupons with us [these were usually available at the Visitor Center in whichever county or state you visited]. At least they had Comedy Central.