This morning we took the Circulator bus out to the sleepy, picturesque old port of Georgetown. We saw the Old Stone House (1765), probably one of the oldest buildings in Washington and wandered along the Potomac. We also sauntered along the main shopping streets and so came to a cup cake shop (picture) with a large queue stretching away up the street. Americans, as we are learning, take their cupcakes very seriously. Then it was back to the hotel to prepare for the next leg of our journey. As with New York, it was impossible to do justice to Washington with the limited amount of time at our disposal. Nevertheless, the youngsters in our party surely came away with an understanding that federal capital cities, with their emphases on institutions and administrations (not to mention Washington’s height restrictions), are not necessarily great, vibrant cities. My own impression was of a city of contradictions and paradoxes. When I ran this morning I had to – literally – leap over the bodies of several people sleeping rough in the middle of the broad sidewalks in the streets. (It looked worryingly as though there had been a massacre.) As we leave, the nineteenth international AIDS Conference is opening in Washington today. How can it be possible, the Washington Post asked this morning, for the capital city of such a mighty country to have a ‘higher rate of HIV than West Africa’ and to be experiencing a ‘severe and generalised AIDS pandemic’? Yet this contrasts with the undoubted majesty of the Capitol and the symbolism of the White House (which is, by the way, exactly what it is – a grand old Irish Georgian mansion). (It was strange, too, after 9/11 and the attacks on the Pentagon and the White House to see planes constantly taking off over the city from nearby Ronald Reagan airport.) Late this afternoon we went to Union Station and boarded the Capitol Limited for an overnight journey of 780 miles through six states to get to Chicago. During the night our clocks will go back one hour as we shift to American Central Time…