Washington

Day one of Topdeck Tour.

We met at a midtown NYC hotel, the snow started just as I walked in.

There is only 13 of us on the tour, one of the smaller ones I have done.

Instead of a bus we are in a mini van. I’m not happy about that. It’s a tight fit, no spare seats and its definitely not as comfortable. Our tour guide now doubles as driver too.

By the time we got in the van everywhere was white with snow.

Turned out we were in the midst of a MASSIVE snowstorm. It took us ages to leave NY and by the time we weren’t far out of the city Congress had been closed.

We had to miss our lunch in Philadelphia. Although I totally understood the circumstances were out of our control I was still disappointed to be missing a Philly cheesesteak!

Part of the way through the trip a piece of the window wiper fell off – not fantastic in the midst of a snowstorm. Thankfully the next gas station could fix it for us.

We finally arrived in Washington about 5pm, glad to finally be out of the van!!

We were very lucky out your guide, Julia, knew how to drive in the snow and got us there safe.

The hotel was lovely, the Doubletree by Hilton and since I booked last and there is an uneven number of girls I managed to get my own room.

The hotel greeted us with warm cookies!!! How good is that?! Come in from a blizzard to a warm, melting, choc chip cookie. Awesome.

Dinner was at a local bar with a set menu, I had a chicken breast with rice as veggies – had eaten so much crap along the way I needed some healthy stuff!

After dinner we were supposed to do a walking tour of the monuments but at -15 degrees it wasn’t gonna happen! Julia managed to drive us round as well as she could to see them all.

I think I was most impressed my the Abe Lincoln monument and the WWII monument. White House was awesome too but I thought my fingers might fall off while I was taking photos!

At the end, my toes were numb, my face was numb and my hands were numb. It is possibly the coldest and worst weather I have been in.

Awesome day though despite it all and a fun group of people.