Welcome to America. Your hotel is next door to the Algerian Embassy. Which is in a bad way.

You remember that American spy plane that got its wings clipped somewhere in the vicinity of China, and the Chinese wouldn't give the crew back for a bit? Several Americans didn't like this. They stood around waving signs and shouting at the Chinese Embassy. Which was over the road from my hotel.

My first morning in town. Grey, cold, and generally just like home. You think those kids are running along the back of the line to appear at both ends of the picture (it's a rotating camera), but actually they're just trying to keep warm.

When the sun came out in the afternoon, I headed straight for Arlington cemetary to look at Robert E Lee's house, JFK's tomb and so on. I figured it might be my only chance of good weather that week.

By the end of the day I was gazing back across the Potomac at Washington, basking in the sun on the back of my head.

A few hours later, I had a scalp-shrinking case of sunburn.

In Washington, I mostly looked at museums, art galleries and monuments. The suburbs of DC maybe the crack and murder capital of the world, but the city center is the polished showcase of its richest country -- policed by the boys in blue, the secret service and gun-toting park rangers in the monuments.

I didn't photograph the galleries much but I got my share of monuments. Here's the canteen in the National Gallery of Art, which is under a plaza and has a view of a fountain/waterfall from below.

The Lincoln Memorial, which I've always admired from afar.

A face evolved specifically for stately monuments.

Quite why this was stuck to the wall in the middle of the FDR memorial I haven't figured out, but it looked pretty cool.

I'll spare you my Vietnam Wall pictures, which suck pretty bad, and give you half the Korea veterans' memorial instead.

The leaning monument of Washington. Closed. Just like home.

In between the general hi-fi geekery and showing each other lenses, we went to visit the distillery for Woodford Reserve bourbon at Versailles. The stuff certainly smelled good.

After the tour, Joe and I wandered around taking photos. Here's Joe with a camera that weighs slightly more than him.

Suzanne was obviously used to the call of the camera.

The next day we went and took some pix in Lexington cemetery, which is a good hunting ground.

By the itching of my thumb, something wicked this way comes.

Sun Studios, the "Birthplace of Rock and Roll". This is where Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, BB King et al got off the ground. It's also where I discovered that my (too) rarely used flashgun doesn't work the way I thought it did...

Alfred's bar, Beale Street, Memphis. Good place to avoid the heat.

Graceland, just out of town. A surprisingly modest building.

Any photo geeks out there will know that shooting colour film indoors is hard work. It takes a yellow tinge under tungsten light, green under fluorescent, magenta under metal halides etc etc. Adjusting the scans in Photoshop is no fun when you're colour blind. Even when you master the technicalities, you tend to get pretty muted colours anyway. I'm often tempted to say sod it and just shoot black and white indoors.

But then you hit a shot like this.

They keep the drapes drawn in Graceland, which gives the place interesting light.

This is presumably to stop the fabrics fading.

Or maybe it's to protect you from seeing them at full brightness.

I think I'd get nightmares sleeping in this bed.

But I have to admit that I liked the pink Cadillac.

I met Elvis.

He told me to turn the record over on his turntable.

The Tennessee Aquarium, in downtown Chattanooga. Yood chance to play with my perspective correction lens.

A hillside sculpture garden in the "Arts District". Every American city seems to have an Arts District -- if they haven't developed one spontaneously (San Francisco), the local authorities pressure wash a couple of brick buildings in a run down warehouse zone and put signs saying "Arts District" on them (New Orleans).

But these places are generally quite pleasant, and I do remember having pretty good sandwiches and iced latté in this one.

Ron lives in a sort of pathologist's compound. He shares a lake with two other houses, only the other two haven't been built yet. So he gets the lake and geese to himself.

The geese had fresh goslings in my honour.

Ron and Jessica took me up the Ococee River, which is in the historic Tennessee Valley Authority system of dams and reservoirs and so on. This giant hydroelectric and irrigation scheme was the symbolic beginning of the "new deal" -- big government, federal spending and so on -- in the US.

Here's one of the reservoirs...

... and one of the dams ...

... and somebody else enjoying the scene ...

... and the algae enjoying life at the top of the dam.

This river was the site of the canoeing events for the Atlanta Olympics. They built some pretty convincing synthetic rocks and used the dam system to provide constant flow. It's still a big canoeing and rafting center, though the season wasn't really under way when we got there.

Jessica with blue raft.

Café du Monde. The world's first coffee stand. With non-stop brass.

Over the road, a typical bit of New Orleans wrought iron. These add on balconies provide outdoor living for the residents and shade for pedestrians.

There are three sorts of street musician in New Orleans.

The professionals, who do it for money.

The amateurs, who do it for fun.

And the slave labour, who do it because they're told to.

St Louis Cathedral, in Jackson Square (after Vuksanovic).

Whilst photographing boats on the river, I was accosted by a passing rock band who demanded photos. I thought of telling them I was from the NME, but...

Savannah has a historic district full of old houses and sleepy squares shaded by 200 year old oak trees. A few decades ago, as it faced being torn down to make way for parking lots, the inevitable preservation movement got underway with the rescue/restoration of this house.

A much grander property up the road.

This is the sort of house that forms the bread and butter of the historic district. There are hundreds of these.

And here's one of those squares.

Savannah recently gained an art school, the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), which provides a steady supply of sketchers to decorate the place.

Once upon a time, this river port was the cotton capital of the world. The Savannah Cotton Exchange set prices for the globe, and zillions of bales went to see via these warehouses. Now they're bars and restaurants and offices and so on.

Something a bit weird happened betwixt scanner and Photoshop, giving me this electric blue sky, but I kinda liked it so I kept it.

Some ironwork around the jetties.

A container ship moored about half a mile out of town. It's astonishing how big these ships are.

When they make their way along the river through town, you can see them looming above the buildings from several blocks away.

I love night shots, and the riverfront in Savannah is a great hunting ground.

Here's a "mercy ship" moored right in the middle of town.

And a bit of photography.