Healing Holistix

With great relief and knowing our bad luck is behind us. We decide to take the night bus tour around the monuments of DC. Our luck has changed and there is a bus leaving soon right from our hotel. hurray! We rush to the desk to make reservations only to be told there is no more room on the bus. Why are we not surprised? We call a cab and ask to go to "The Mall" which is on a map. If we can't see the sights then by God we'll shop! And eat! The cab drops us off at "The Mall" which is a large open grassy space. Where are the shops? Where are the restaurants? Especially the restaurants since we hadn't stopped to eat on the trip down and it took us an extra 1 l/1 hours!!!! Thanks to mapquest! We find out "The Mall" is this open grassy place to stroll around, etc. The cab driver doesn't know where to take us for shops or restaurants - he doesn't really speak English (or American for that matter) We hail another cab - Yes, he can take us to a nice area with restaurants (by now we are too hungry to even think about shopping - which means we are pretty hungry) and it is by the water. The only downside to that is he seemed to have escaped from a mental home and he ranted and raved as he drove. By some miracle he actually took us to restaurants near the water and we couldn't get out of the cab fast enough. He was also linguistically challenged and thank God we couldn't understand most of his rantings. We approached the water and we were at the most beautiful setting with restaurants, water, fountains and flowers. Surely our luck had changed.......

......we finally get a reservation for the bus tour around the monuments. For sure our luck is about to change. We are the first on the bus - see? - we have the pick of the seats. I get on with a cheery "Good Morning" Bus driver/tour guide replies "Hunh" (sounds like a grunt) OK....I say "How are you?" Another grunt. I give up. My daughter in law who notices the toilet is out of order asks how often the bus will stop for toilet breaks. He doesn't bother to answer. She asks again. He says "I don't feel like answering that right now" We are now driving along. We stop and my son asks again about rest stops. Hands on hips, aggrevated tone of voice "When everyone gets on the bus I'll answer that. I'm only going to say it once" and off the bus he gets (thank goodness before my son can get his hands around his throat.) My son wants to get off and get our money back. At this point we are not so sure we can get our money back with the way our luck is going. We vote to stay on and see what happens. The bus is now full, our guide stands in the front, introduces himself and couldn't be nicer thru the rest of the trip! Obviously he decided his job or being nice didn't start until the bus was full. He was very knowledgable and when we forgot how horrible he had been we enjoyed the tour. Some of the monuments are so beautiful but I couldn't forget the areas in DC where poverty and crime are rife. That's a whole 'nother thread!