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We only had one night in the nation's capital and so much to see. We landed late afternoon and caught a shuttle to our hostel….yes another hostel. This one was almost like a boarding school because they made us read the rules and then sign them. Nobody does that. That's when I thought there was something weird about the place then shortly after we are told that the hostel rooms were shoe free. Who does that!? So we had to leave our shoes with everyone else's in the hostel shoe rack. We headed to our 8 bed dorm where we discovered that there was nowhere in the rooms to securely lock away our luggage. That basically means you can't unpack and that all your personal belongings need to be locked away in your bag before you leave. Frustrated, we thought the best idea was to spend as little time as possible in our rooms. We headed straight out to Union St - about 10mins away, where we booked a hop on/hop off night tour of Washington. This worked out really well because the sun doesn't go down until 8pm so it was more of a sunset tour. Before our tour thought, we had about a couple of hours to kill, so we walked to Capitol Hill and got some tourist photo's then wandered to the head office of NASA. It was during this walk that I was approached by a squirrel on a ledge. Normally I don't pay much attention to them but this one was sitting up looking at me so I couldn't help myself. I walked up to the squirrel and he didn't run away which peaked my curiosity. I put my hand out and he leaned in and sniffed it. I couldn't believe it, I was sharing a moment with a squirrel and he wasn't scared. I got a bit more confident and gave him a scratch on his head. It was at this point things changed quite rapidly. Before I knew it, the squirrel had dug into my fingers and was running up my arm biting me - I literally had to shake him off me! I local walked past after it had happened in disbelief that it had attacked me and there was quite a bit of laughter all round.
We got to the NASA HQ but they were closed however, they did have a huge screen that was a live feed to the international space station which was pretty awesome.
Our night tour started at 7 and took us around all the major landmarks in Washington. There were also a few stops where we got off the bus and toured that memorial. There are so many memorials in Washington that there are too many to list. It did give me a better realisation of America's most recent history as well as a greater respect for President Roosevelt and how he kept the US going during the war years and depression.
The tour went for about 2hours and when it was done we got the bus to drop us off in Chinatown for dinner. The rest of the city was very quiet because it was Memorial Day public holiday - which I guess the equivalent in Australia is ANZAC Day. Feeling that we had maximised our time out of the hostel, we headed straight to bed around 10pm - shoes off then were up early again the next day - shoes on and headed out to do some more sight seeing.
Anita and I went to the international spy museum where we had way too much fun. They give you fake id's and information on your undercover mission while looking at the exhibits (narrated by Dame Judy Dench). The first half of the museum is the history of the secret services showing actual footage of spy missions and the second half was dedicated to James Bond. It was so interactive that at one point you had to crawl through an air con vent to eavesdrop on a conversation.
Thinking we would only need a couple of hours to see it, we actually spent half our day there. After that, we walked across the park to the Smithsonian Museums and in particular - The National Air and Space Museum. We spent the rest of the afternoon there looking at the history of American aviation and space with their collection of aircraft and lunar vehicles. Pretty cool stuff and all the Smithsonian Museums are free. Because it was also really hot in Washington, we bought a 24hr train pass for $15, so we were either in air con buildings or on the subway. Our final stop on our self guided tour was the White House. We got some really good pictures because it was quiet, probably because Memorial Day had come and gone, also the fact that a huge storm was rolling in.
We made it back to our hostel and caught the airport shuttle just in time. Our 24hrs in Washington had come to and end and it was time for Boston.
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