Travel Broadens the mind

And the soles of the feet.

We like to walk. When we were in Washington we walked the length of the National Mall and visited almost all the memorials. That's one awesome space.

I was deeply impressed by the scale of the  WWII memorial and the perfect simplicity of the Vietnam memorial wall, but the Korean War memorial with its statues of an exhausted looking patrol and the ghostly figures on the wall demanded that the passer by stop and think.

Looking round, I wasn't the only one drawn to ponder on its significance and meaning.

Another day we walked from our hotel to the National Cathedral (in a rain storm). I can't say that all the stained glass windows were to my taste but there were some stunners. I particularly liked the Space Exploration window. Lots of embroidered kneelers in the various chapels and well worth the visit. The décor was a little too "Spikey High" for my Presbyterian tastes, but beautiful from an artistic perspective. We couldn't see Darth Vader for the rain but we did discover the cafeteria.
And on the way back it rained on us again!

But we were there for seminar and there were classes to attend. I had three fascinating days in Jo Ippolito Christensen's classes and I started to learn a new skill- whitework - with Sandi Cormaci-Boles. It's called "Passionate Pineapple", and every now and then I'll share a picture of my progress.

If I achieve nothing else, at least I'll know how to do eyelets!

And then we flew home. There was major turbulence during flight, but I was watching Pacific Rim, Uprising so during the big fight scenes it felt like getting 4D for free. Cool!

Now, as the saying goes, 'It's back tae auld clase and cauld parritch!'