American Presidents – A Speechwriter Tour

Yesterday I was up early. No credit to me. It was 9 in the UK and 4 in the US. But I still felt self righteous. I charged my camera, wrote a smug blog and chatted on Facebook with Sam - a brilliant and funny guy who is working for me during his university holiday. By 7am Denise and I were in her hired Jeep and off to do what she calls the Speechwriter Tour of Washington. She is threatening to blog about this but I am getting in first. We drove down through Rock Creek Park past the Watergate and then we parked next to the Potomac. First we went to the Abraham Lincoln Memorial. There was a small unit of the Honour Guard there performing a ceremony and me and Denise and a few runners. That was it. It is August and we were early. No tourists. Apart from me.... Then I stood on the spot where MLK delivered THAT speech and looked at the magnificent view. Then we walked along the Reflecting Pool and past the trees which both had been full of people during Martin Luther King's speech. I took a great pic of a Parkway Policeman and his horse. He told me the horse was 18 hands - that is a seriously big horse. Stunning. We inspected the ironically incredibly Germanic WW2 memorial and then went up to the Washington monument. Then it was off to the Martin Luther King memorial via the DC WW1 memorial. I will blog about and publish photos of this monument separately, but briefly: it has his quotes surrounding it. They are good. I took pics of most of them. Then we went to the FDR Memorial - it is an interesting walk-through kind of memorial. Not grand, but very cool. Probably my favourite. It had a section dedicated to Eleanor Roosevelt to. I am a fan. Then we were off to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. Denise told me the story of JFK inviting all the US Nobel prize winners to a White House dinner. She said that in his speech he said: "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." The quote was probably written by a speechwriter - but JFK added the bit in italics. I have uploaded some of the pictures here. I have to go and get ready now. I am going on a private tour of the White House. #SmugBot