TRAVEL - WASHINGTON, ALEXANDRIA & ANNAPOLIS

Washington DC. What do you think of? The White House? Capitol Hill? Various monuments and memorials? Yes, it's all these things, but it's also much more if you're prepared to get over there, get yourself a car and get around the place.

Before recently visiting, I hadn't appreciated just how close the US capital is to the other 'happening' cities on the American East Coast: Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York are all just a short drive North. Before planning yourself an itinerary that takes all of these places in however, checkout what's closer to the capital itself.

Take the suburb of Alexandria for instance, which lies far enough away from the centre of DC (lying the other side of the Potomac river) to have its own identity. If you've never heard of Alexandria, then you're in good company with most Americans we met. “It's one of those places I drive through but never stop at,” one of them told me vaguely, unwittingly in UK terms likening the hometown of 1st US President George Washington to the status of Slough or Bedford.



Like many modern visitors, Washington preferred Alexandria's more peaceful streets to the bustling city centre just across the water and kept a town house in what is now classy Alexandria Old Town. Most Americans are more familiar however, with his mansion at Mount Vernon, eight miles or so South. Though this residence attracts literally hundreds of thousands of tourists each year, the Alexandria area itself isn't on the general foreign (or domestic) visitor's route: it should be. In a land over-filled with fast food joints and outlet malls, the Old Town's traditional High Street is a refreshing change. So are the varied shops and the friendly attitude to strangers from local hotels, even the chain ones...