The morning weather bulletin indicated that rain was expected the following day so I decided to focus on outdoor activities for day one which meant the National Mall – a massive expanse of green on the Potomac River and home to some famous buildings – the Capital, the Washington Monument, the Smithsonian museums and the Lincoln Memorial. The White House is also nearby. The bad news – both the Capital and the lawns leading up to it are undergoing some construction so the experience wasn’t ideal. The length of the National Mall is 3km and to cover all the main attractions I basically walked from one end to the other and back again so by about 3pm I decided that I’d had enough and started back to the hotel without having covered some of the Smithsonian museums. All up the Fitbit tells me that on this day I did 32,468 steps, over 21km and had 253 active minutes. Phew!

The picture above was taken from my hotel window and I’m pretty certain that it’s a Presidential Motorcade (you should be able to make out the line of black SUVs). Emergency sirens are pretty common in just about all the cities I’ve visited here but this one went on for so long that I got up to take a squiz at what all the fuss was about – immediately preceding this photo there were about a dozen police motorcycles/vehicles all with their lights and sirens on and, following the eight or so black SUVs, another group of police vehicles. I can’t be certain it was Obama but it seems so quintessentially DC that I’d like to think it’s true!