From The D, To The C!
29th of May:
I had arrived a day early (I don’t know why I didn’t set my booking to start a day earlier), so I had to change room and checkout time was 11, and check-in time, 14. So I checked out at 10.30 and sat around waiting until 14, when I checked in. I could have left my bag and walked around DC, but $4 for a few hours of storage, was more than I was willing to sacrifice, and I had to upload my Cuba pictures anyway, although the internet connection is so slow, that I never even finished Habana.
When I had finally checked out, I was so hungry my stomach felt like it was turning inside out. I found a sandwich cafe called Cosi, and had the most delicious sandwiches, it might be much more expensive than South America, but for this kind of increase in quality, I can live with it. I spent the next many hours, just walking around in Washington DC, in the general area of my hostel, stopping west just before I could see the White House (saving that one) and east at the end of Chinatown.
Around 17:45 I left my hostel and took the metro to White Flint, where after waiting for 30 minutes (I was 30 minutes early), a girl named Jackie picked me up. Jackie is a friend of Rachel, a girl I met in Futaleufu in Chile and later in Bariloche, who invited me to come to her fathers birthday. They drove me to the party, a surprise party, which excited me as I had never attended one before. It was outdoors on the sixth floor (top floor), with a good view and a great many people. After about 30 minutes of waiting, talking with Jackie, Rachel’s mother and grandmother, David (Rachel’s father who turned 50) arrived, together with Rachel and Eyal (her boyfriend who was also there in Chile and Argentina), it was very nice to meet them again, the food was good, and a very talented musician named Rav Shmuel (David and his family is Jewish, nearly everyone present was Jewish and Rav Shmuel is in fact, besides a rock musician, also a rabbi).
As the birthday party ended, everyone was given a surprise bag, with an anti stress toy, a small towel and a Rav Shmuel CD (shortly before I had asked for his name, so that I could try to buy his CD); I was then given a ride back to the metro station (in a hybrid car, no less), and took the train back to my hostel. It was fairly late, so I went straight to bed, and quickly fell asleep.
30th of May:
Major sightseeing day, I skipped out on breakfast (2 dollars for some bread rolls?) and went out walking, first crossing into the NE neighbourhood to see a bit of that part of the city (not nice), and then walked down south to the Capital building, walking along Pennsylvania avenue (where I ate some lunch) to see the White House which is closed for for non US citizens (and they have to apply to their senator or congressman 3 months in advance, in groups of 10 or more), Washington Monument (which had run out of tickets, so I couldn’t go up close, but I think it is meant to be seen from afar, and it is beautiful), the WWII memorial (where apparently WWII didn’t begin till USA joined in 1941), the Reflecting pool, the Lincoln Memorial, Korea Memorial, Vietnam Memorial and all that stuff in that general area.
Everything in that neighbourhood of Washington D.C. (known as The Mall), feels very sterile, is very very grand (architecture) and more imposing than inviting, but I imagine that’s what you want in a city, designed to be the capital. Of all my sights on this day, the Lincoln Memorial was by far my favourite, it also included a free tour, which was very informative and good (the guide even pointed out a misspelling in the second presidential inauguration speech, which had been filled out later), but the place in itself, is more beautiful. Outside the memorial on one of the marble slabs, it says “I Have A Dream” followed by “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” and a date “August 28th, 1963″, the slab is located on the site where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave the famous speech. Two great men, remembered in one place.
Back at the hostel, I had signed up for jazz tour, where we were about 10 or 11 people that left with a volunteer, who took us to a free jazz concert in a nearby park. The park was absolutely stuffed and the band had a habit of playing for 5 minutes and then taking a 20 minute break, so after about an hour or so, we all left and most of us went to Chinatown for dinner.
Afterwards I followed up on one of my great desires, I went to see Indiana Jones IV. I won’t reveal anything, just tell you not to get your expectations up too high.
After I had left the capital much earlier in the day, I saw a woman crash on a Segway, I thought that was supposed to be impossible? I also later learned (from my trusty Lonely Planet) that the Chinese restaurant I had eaten at, was the place where the murder on Lincoln had been planned (although, I doubt it was a Chinese restaurant back then).
31st of May:
I had been told that Adams Morgan was a by far more beautiful part of DC, so I spent the day walking there, walking around and walking back. The first time it started raining heavily, I dived into a pizza restaurant recommended in the Lonely Planet for their jumbo slices, which took up 2 plates, and did a lot of sticking over the edge, it was easily the size of a normal pizza, but I liked that it was just a big slice. Second time I was on my way to Massachusetts avenue, where Embassy Row is; the street where most embassies are. I never found a Scandinavian embassy, but it was interesting anyway, aside from the fact that I was completely drenched. Had I found a Scandinavian embassy I wouldn’t have gone near it, just looked from afar. I am not going to go home early, as technically the land on which an embassy is located, belongs to that country.
Instead of spending the last part of the day trudging around, I went back to the hostel, and tried to dry my things, and just had a relaxing evening, with some not very kebab like kebab food for dinner, from the deli across the street.
1st of June:
I thought I would walk around to a lot of museums, and see a lot. Instead I walked into the Newseum as my first museum, and stuck around all day long, till closing time, which is the closing time for all museums in DC (17 o’clock). It is a museum about “news”, freedom of expression, ad he costs they come at, displayed by a memorial wall to American journalists who had died doing their job, artifacts from famous journalists who died in the field (or gotten injured). It also had a huge wall with all the Pulitzer winning pictures in chronological order, and the history behind them, often very tragic. There was a very cool 3D movie, which recreated famous histories of journalism such as Nellie Bly (although no Watergate). A section dedicated to 9/11 with frontpages from many newspapers from around the globe, videos about people who survived and died, and part of the radiotower from the north WTC tower.
On the jollier side, there was a big interactive part of the museum, with big touchscreens that quizzed you on your knowledge about journalism and freedom rights, there was an introduction to the TV world in a real TV studio, where later in the day I was in the audience watching an interview with a local celebrity, Arch Campbell a movie reviewer. There was a big exhibit with radio and TV broadcasts of the most famous even the 20th century, and a section on the future of journalism, focused heavily on the use of Inter, blogging and Youtube. There was an historic exhibit with a big part of the Berlin wall, a Soviet watchtower (from near the wall) and the sign saying “You are leaving the American sector” in 4 different languages from checkpoint Charlie.
When I left around 17 o’clock I still hadn’t eaten anything and was really hungry. I walked by a place called Potbelly, it was a sandwicheria and the sandwiches were absolutely world class, I had two on account of hungry I was, and was somewhere near the best sandwiches I have ever had.
The rest of the day was without much excitement, just hung around the hostel, not doing much.
2nd of June:
I started out by going to the National Zoo, where I saw Panda’s for the first time ever, and then a lot of other animals, including the ever cool Komodo Dragon. The zoo is very good, with a very large range of animals, and a lot of conservation programs. It has something called a “ThinkTank” where you read a lot of different signs, see illustrations etc. meant to question the definition of animals, whether or not they are intelligent etc. it was well done, except for one place where it was supposed to say “Take The Red Bag” in about 50 different languages, although all the Scandinavian languages had misspellings.
When I left I went to the Library of Congress and got a tour, it is big, marble, marble, marble with a beautiful main reading hall. There isn’t much to tell about either place (Zoo or Library of Congress), one place has a lot of animals, and the other has a lot of books. I had never seen Panda’s before, but I had indeed seen a Gutenberg bible before.
Later in the day I did nothing but eat more sandwiches at Potbelly and finish my book “White Oleander” by Janet Fitch (I think). It is a very graphic, but very serious book; it is very good, but not for the faint of heart.
3rd of June:
I had set my watch to wake me up at 8 in the morning, but I woke up by myself at 6.30, and just took everything in my slow pace, until I finally set out, and walked to the corner of 8th street and H street, from where my bus to New York, New York (so good they named it twice) would be leaving. I had good time and I knew I wouldn’t be in NY before 13 or 14 o’clock, and I was hungry, but not much was open. So for my healthy and nutritious breakfast I ate a flatbread ham and cheese and six doughnuts (only open place was Dunkin’ Donuts).
The bus came, I boarded and we set sail (almost) towards New York. On the bus I started reading the next book, one I had purchased (since I am now in an English speaking country, there aren’t really any book exchanges at the hostels (there is one, but it only has horrible books, with fainting women on the covers), so I had bought “A Walk In The Woods” by one of my favourite authors, Bill Bryson.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 00:55. It is filed under USA.
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