Things to See in Washington DC

Despite the mixed crowd of young students and older professionals, ain't nobody getting dressed up here. The decor is Day of the Dead meets Night of the Living Dead: blinking lights, monster comics laminated onto the tables and voodoo critters on the walls. Dance on weekends and drink all week. Two additional clubs are upstairs: punk Chaos (not to be confused with Club Chaos) and hip-hop Cosmo Lounge.

The city's pre-eminent jazz and blues club is tucked into a dark alley off Wisconsin Ave in the heart of Georgetown. Inside, this elegant candlelit supper club has attracted such artists as Ahmad Jamal and the late Dizzy Gillespie. Current performers include Mose Allison Trio, Ann Hampton Callaway and the Marcus Johnson Project. The Creole specialties are delicious. The crowd is largely professional.

Decidedly retro decor and brightly colored martinis go hand-in-hand at this swanky, new cocktail lounge. The menu claims that 'To drink is human, to lounge is divine' and you will certainly believe it after spending an evening here sipping martinis and munching on gourmet finger-food.

To many folks, Adams-Morgan means just one thing: Ethiopian food. You can eat it at several restaurants, but the leading place is Meskerem, named for the first month of the Ethiopian calendar. This place goes for an exotic atmosphere, with traditional woven straw-basket tables and camel-leather hassocks. Use your hands to sample beef, poultry, lamb, seafood and vegetarian dishes, which are served on whole-wheat injera (pancake-like bread).

Drooling locals have flocked to this Peruvian chicken joint for decades now in search of tender, juicy, flavor-packed birds served with succulent dipping sauces, crunchy fries and sloppy 'slaw - lines form outside the door come dinnertime. You can eat at rather unappealing plastic tables inside or do the recommended thing and take the precious stuff back to your hotel room to chow to the noise of HBO dramas and taste of icy mini-fridge beer.

Pop into this Italian bistro at night when the vibe is rowdy and crowds waiting for a table (try to score a coveted on the outdoor patio or by the big street-side windows) spill onto Wisconsin. Brick-oven baked pizzas, grilled meats and pastas complement the award-winning wine list and with the white table clothes and lots of ambient noise it makes an easy-going first date spot.

Here's a local secret: if you're ever stuck in a thunderstorm while wandering around the Mall, make a dash for the Lincoln Memorial. Thunder seems to rumble like clockwork nearly every 4th of July, and everyone in the know takes shelter under the marble dome, crouching near the foot of the enormous chair in which a gigantic Lincoln holds court.

It's definitely a toss-up when it comes to which is Washington's most iconic image, the Capitol or the White House. We're going to have to put on the Team Capitol jersey - there's just nothing quite like the sight of the towering 285ft cast-iron dome topped by the bronze Statue of Freedom, ornate fountains and marble Roman pillars set on sweeping lawns and flowering gardens that just screams this is DC.

The 612 acres and 245,000 graves of this national cemetery are a sombre counterpoint to the soaring monuments to US history just across the Potomac. It's the burial ground for military personnel and their families, the dead of every war the US has fought since the Revolution, and American leaders such as JFK, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Medgar Evers.

Each year, eight million people visit these cavernous halls filled with alighted airplanes and soaring spacecraft (including the Wright Brothers' Flyer, Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St Louis and the Apollo 11 command module). The museum's 23 galleries trace the history of aviation and space exploration through interactive displays and historic artefacts.

The memorial is comprised of two walls of polished Indian granite that meet in a 10ft apex. They are inscribed with the names of the 58,209 soldiers killed in the war, arranged chronologically by date of death. It's an eloquent inversion of the Mall's other monuments: rather than a pale, ornate structure reaching skyward, it's dark, austere and burrows into the earth, symbolizing the war's wound to the national psyche.