Day 41 8/8 A lesson in patience in Philadelphia and an easy drive (for the passengers) to Washington

It was a very sad parting this morning, leaving our beautiful accommodation and saying goodbye to our wonderful hosts, Sara and Bill. We had enjoyed their company so much and had many great laughs and good conversations. Their gorgeous dog, Scout (Ridgeback/Lab cross) decided he wanted to travel with us and hopped in our car. We would have loved to take him but there just wasn’t the room. We had organised to take our hire car back into Philadelphia city and book another, slightly larger car this time. We put the address in google maps (A Sheraton on Race St.). After doing a reasonable job driving us into the city, we arrived with plenty of time. The only thing was that there was no sign of a car rental return. Paul went into the Sheraton and they didn’t know anything about it. We consulted google maps again and found another Sheraton also on Race Street. We drove to this spot and couldn’t find the Sheraton at all. Rob parked the car where we could and Paul went out to try to find out where we needed to take the car. After 30 minutes he returned to say the “Sheraton” was in the process of being rebuilt and it is no longer the Sheraton. He found out where we needed to return the car…….just where all the building work was happening…..no signs……nothing. We had to take our old car down to the garage in the basement but the entrance was blocked off by bollards so we had to go in the exit! Once in the basement we had to go to the office in the rebuilt part of the Sheraton….which is no longer the Sheraton. We found some stairs and climbed a couple of floors but this seemed to be a fire escape and doors were alarmed. Back to the basement. We then found a lift. It took us to the reception area in another building….not the Sheraton that’s is no longer the Sheraton. Luckily a man told us “Where to go!” Finally we made it to the correct lobby and found the Budget car office. This whole exercise probably took 90 minutes from when we first arrived in the city! Anyway once we’d changed our car we managed to escape the city in a slightly larger car and make our way to Washington. Rob was very interested to travel over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The rest of us kept having a go at him about this but when we drove over this bridge we were very impressed. The size and structure was not like anything we had seen before. The rest of our journey was uneventful and we arrived safely at our Airbnb in Washington around 3pm.