I started the day by visiting the National Archive which houses the original constitution and the declaration of independence. There’s also one of only 4 remaining copies of the Magna Carta from 1297. No pictures are allowed so I bought a copy of the declaration from the gift shop. Next stop was the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum which has various extracts from aviation and space exploration history and a very amusing Underground poster from 1915.

After lunch at the Old Ebbitt Grill we went to the Library of Congress which has a spectacular reading room. There was an exhibition by Herbert Block a political cartoonist whose cartoons seemed to be years ahead of his time.

I met Stewart at Dulles and we took a taxi into Washington. First tourist destinations were the Whitehouse (security prevented us getting closer), Lincoln Monument and the war memorial. There was a rather tasteless promotion for a new HBO series about the Pacific war campaign which used genuine veterans to make Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg look good.

In Manasssas on business, so far I’ve had dinner in the Backyard Grill (excellent ribs), Zabb Thai restaurant (good starter) and Akasaka Japanese restaurant (everything was good).

We went to Delft to try out a cafe that Jessica had read about and to visit an olive oil shop. We couldn’t find the cafe and the oil shop was closed. Delft looks worth exploring but it was too cold to enjoy strolling around. We’ll go back in the summer.

There’s a farm just outside Amsterdam that specialises in food with real taste (according to their website). They have some really nice stuff with the tomatoes in particular being the best we’ve tasted in a long time. It’s still quite cold here so most of the waterways were frozen over emphasising just how much water there is as you go further north.

Angus seems to enjoy trying to hold Scott.

Carnaval is a big thing in the south of The Netherlands. Children have to dress up on the last day before the school holidays and there is a parade which goes past our house.

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Katrina gave this to Scott. He hasn’t worked out that he can bounce up and down in it.

This is not how Scott normally eats his bananas.