Having never been in Washington before, and with the heat, we might have been forgiven for thinking it was like California. It's not.  The people who we met in Washington were polite, not unfriendly - but certainly at first - they didn't smile much.  They were even a little abrupt and some of the announcements on the Metro were completely unintelligible.

And it's true what they say about the UK and the US - we are two nations divided by a common language. At Mr Smith's - a bar in Georgetown which is an institution in the city - we tried unsuccessfully to ask for water.  The waiter only realised what we were saying when we asked for "warda".

Our first day was spent on a bus getting an eyeful of the monuments and buildings in this lovely city. It's a bit like the American version of Paris or Rome - classical allusions simply litter the place, with ornate plasterwork decorating every spare corner, pillar or wall.  And because nothing is built higher than the statue of liberty adorning the Capitol Building, Washington is low rise in comparison to many other American cities, and as a result, even with the columns and porticos, seems actually fairly human.

This feeling was reinforced by the tour guide on one of the buses we took; her recitation of facts and figures was fairly perfunctuary - until she got to talk about food. Her knowledge of pizza outlets, McDonalds', and burrito bars seemed encyclopedic. While she mistakenly put Concorde in the Washington building of the Aviation and Space Museum, she could tell us authoritatively that there were 30 flavours of ice cream available in the Food Court.

Washington, the White House and the Willard

Ok, so Washington at the end of July is not the most comfortable temperature for two ladies from London - but we thought that given that tempers in our capital city were bound to rise because of transport and the Olympics, we thought we'd decamp to someone else's capital instead

And while steamy and hot, Washington has that effortless elegance which makes you want to turn into Julia Roberts or Audrery Hepburn wearing big hats and even bigger sunglasses. We arrived courtesy of Virgin Atlantic at around two in the afternoon, a pleasant flight even in economy. Leaving the safety of the airport's air-conditioning to get a cab, the heat hit us like a wall. Thankfully  a cab ride soon delivered us to the grace and grandeur of the Willard Hotel, and after depositing our luggage, we set off (slowly) for the White House.

Unfortunately, the White House doesn't give tours to foreign nationals currently, and we were forced to take photographs of the South Lawn through railings,  keeping a wary eye on the heavily armed guards on the roof.  The White Houseis, as everyone says, smaller than you think it's going to be.   But it is beautiful, in a colonial, slaves-sweeping-the-porch kind of way.

This thought came back to us several times in our visit; there is something about the rhetoric which doesn't quite align with historical fact.  There's nothing untrue, it's just not the whole truth.  But we'll come back to that through the trip.

What has caused us some amusement is the reporting of the Olympics - some of the TV coverage has been relentlessly patronising when referring to the UK - not to mention poorly pronounced.   Not that we're bitter over the lack of medals so far, and the current lack of gold.....

One thing of which we could feel justifiably proud - we felt renewed respect and love for the BBC, free as it is from 12 minute ad breaks every 10 minutes.

Here we go again

We've been very quiet but here we go.  Soon we'll be escaping the Olympics and heading off on our travels again.  We aim to inform and hopefully amuse our friends as we explore new experiences and revisit some old ones - watch this space!