Cathy, Paula and I appreciated our vacation at your beautiful home this last week. This letter a is my way of remembering all the treats we enjoyed.

Thursday Our trip from San Francisco to Washington D.C. took almost a full day on ATA airlines with one stopover in Chicago. Next time we will look for a direct flight.

After collecting our bags in DC, it was easy to find the Hertz Car Rental. It was late at night, there was only one agent and he was busy at the time. We ask for an economy car but he upgraded as to a Ford station wagon. We collected our various driving directions and followed the instructions from the agent who said to use their computer which would be best, which we did. On following these directions we got lost, but with some kind help from Marina we eventually arrived at her house. It was late at night and we hated to keep wake her up but she and Bill were both friendly and cheerful as always. We were escorted to our nicely furnished room where we unpacked and went to bed.

Friday The next day Bill went to work. Marina helped us get started, by making us breakfast. We drove to the Metro station, parked and then took the Metro down town and visited Cathy's branch TPL office in Washington D.C. Cathy met several co-workers she had previously only known by their voices over the telephone. It had been a bit of a challenge to find the office because they had renumbered the building from 666 to the new number of 660. This was because some of the locals were superstitions. Not only that, the address was around the corner on 17th Street not actually on the Main Street.

Next we took the Metro to Paula' office. Because it was Friday most of her co-workers were out but we met several of them and saw the office. We took her to lunch which at a very pleasant local place that had excellent sandwiches. Then Paula went back to work and we ventured on. We decided to try and hail a taxi since we were running little late and it was a bit rainy. One time I ventured into the street to wave down a cab when a truck passed bye and splashed me with water all over the front of me. However as we soon found a cab and arrived at the capital. While Paula was at work we went on the Capital tour that she had arranged for us via Nancy Pilosi's office. It turned out to be better than we had hoped. Joining our tour group was a man and woman who were very nicely dressed. Apparently they were friends of one of the capital in-people. Fortunately for us the two of us we were taken along with them on a behind the scenes tour through areas with signs that declared things like "do-not-enter". We were escorted past policeman, uniformed guards, through special doors and upstairs via areas not open to the public. We were whisked right past the guards and on behind the scenes to great effect. After that part of the tour, a young blond woman took us on the regular capital tour which turned out to be quite entertaining and enjoyable.

After the capital tour, we went back and met Paula at her apartment and the three of us along with Paula's roommate went to dinner. A nice time was had by all.

Saturday Marina was up as early as we were and she fixed us a great breakfast of eggs, orange juice and biscuits. I thoroughly enjoyed it, because normally I have relatively plain breakfast of English muffins and hot oatmeal cereal. Soon Bill and Marina drove us into the city. Bill had brought a newspaper clipping which noted several activities during the cherry blossom week festivities. I chose my favorite which was to take a guided tour walking around the tidal basin, under the cherry trees with fortunately for us were in full bloom. The tour started on the steps of the Metro and we showed up about 15 minutes early but no one was there. However as time went on more people showed up until there were two groups of 15 or 20 people. We elected to take the second group with the seemingly more experience tour guide. The charge was $10 a person and we were off along the Mall with the tour guide interspersing helpful knowledge about various statues, trees and people of importance. She pointed out various sites that could returned to see and visit as a self guided tour. Along the way we visited F.D.R. Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial both of which were quite large and eventful.

Next we took the metro to Arlington for dinner. It was a several block walk to a nice old narrow commercial street with many restored buildings populated with shops restaurants and antique stores. Dinner was good, in an Argentine restaurant and everyone was happy. We learned that we could take the shuttle back to the station and take the Metro back to our car and then drive to Bill and Marina's home. on the way back we asked directions to a supermarket called Giant, where we bought some grapes for the house and we bought a map.

The only problem on this trip was that the maps had were not up to date with the freeway construction. This made us to lose our way several times. Finally near the end of the trip we found out that you can't back from DC unless you take an exit circle around on some city streets and then take another on ramp back onto another freeway.

Sunday sleepy and a little bit late, we drive in a car caravan to Cosco with Bill and Marina and we all had lunch there. Bill and Marina lead us by car to Mount Vernon. We paid our entry fee and we went in. Walking up the hill we arrived at a large grassy circle in front of a rather large colonnaded building to the east. There are gardens to the south where the sun hits and remnants of slave quarters. Many tourists walking around some following docents and guides.

This historical landmark is managed by a ladies group and they're doing a wonderful job with little money. There were huge groups of school kids lining up to go into the house so we walked around the grounds and waited till 4:00 when the line was almost nonexistent.

Monday I took time out from our vacation, to go to the Home Depot and by some ground fault interrupters for Bill and Marina's guest bathrooms. I wanted to buy some CD desks to replace those I had used but no luck there. We took the Metro in to DC again and had lunch in one of the museums while we waited for our two o'clock appointment at the Holocaust Museum. The Holocaust Museum self-guided tour was promoted as being a two-hour tour, but we stayed about three hours altogether reading he various displays and studying what was going on. I was moved by an exhibit of a large pile of umbrellas sans the cloth coverings. It was obvious that a lot of people had thought umbrellas were a suitable thing to bring.

That evening we took Bill and Marina out to dinner at the Out Back Steakhouse.

Tuesday Up early for an all-day tour by bus to Monticello.

Wednesday took the metro into the DC again: Cathy went to Georgetown while I checked out the museums of science and industry and walked around various exhibits.

Thursday Back on the airplane, and home.