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This weekend some friends and I made the mammoth journey to the capital of the USA, Washington DC. We spent a total of 32 hours on a coach over the 4 days, which consisted of listening to the Maverick Sabre album at least 3 times, beginning to read the Harry Potter books, persistently trying to complete Logo quiz and regularly annoying anyone around me. Surprisingly though it wasn't actually too bad. I think we have all become so used to travelling by coach that a 15 hour journey doesn't actually feel so horrific!
So once we made it to Washington we headed straight to the hostel to meet up with Steph and 7 of her friends from UMass (University of Massachusetts) they had arrived a little earlier than us, by plane the lucky things! So they set off out and let us freshen up after our long journey. No time is to be wasted on these trips though so after a quick shower we followed after the 'Americans' and set off to do the Memorial walk. The first on the walk was probably the most well-known, the Whitehouse! It was a really lovely building, although not quite as big as I had expected. It was just down a fairly normal street which I also didn't expect but even still it was Very cool to be there. And several jokes followed of 'asking obama if he wanted to play out', 'telling security he was expecting us' and any other ploy that could be used to meet the big man.
After finally parting with Obama's house we headed down to the Washington Monument, the WW2 memorial, the Vietnam war memorial (where confusion occured as to why Gaylord was inscribed in each statue) and to the Abraham Lincoln memorial. The latter was my favourite as I've seen it in soo many films and the view from up there of the monument and the city was pretty special. We finally ended the walk at the Martin Luther King memorial where we of course all posed like him in front of the statue and got some funny looks from fellow tourists.
The weirdest thing about being in Washington the whole weekend was the obvious lack of people!! I don't know if this is just how the city always is or if it was because it was the weekend after the Inauguration (as if I missed Beyonce!) but there was hardly any people, even tourists, everywhere we went. It was quite nice really after previously being in crazy busy New York but also a little unnerving.
After the walk we ended up in Starbucks where everyone got overexcited at the man writing 'Lenny' instead of Jenny on my cup. This has been my nickname since way before christmas courtesy of Ryan. Its also expanded to Leonard, NARD and Cenny or Catard for me and Cait together. I've got a strong feeling I'm not going to shake it off any time soon! (Also White hot chocolate with whipped cream in Starbucks - heaven!)
We also visited the US Holocaust Memorial museum which was really really interesting but also terribly sad and shocking. I wish we had more time there as there was so much to see but it closed and hour and a half after we arrived.
For the meal that night we intended on going for a cheap chinese buffet, that was until we stumbled upon a NANDOS!! Thats right a Nando's in America, you probably can't understand our excitement, it was a quick decision and before long we were satisying our british cravings!
Day 2 -
Day 2 in Washington began with a trip up the Old Post Office Tower as recommended by a lovely Park warden. Although being only 32 floors high it was cool to see a higher view of the Capital (and Capitol!) After this we went to the National Musuem of Natural History and the National Air and Space Musuem, both part of the Smithsonian free musueum complex. The latter was definatly more of a boys playground.
We then walked over to the Capitol, the impressive building where the US congress meets. With the frozen lake just in front of it, it made for plenty of great photo oppurtunities. After the Capitol by the time we had navigated our way to a subway station it was beginning to get dark so we headed over to Georgetown, a cool little sub-area of Washington with little cool shops and restaurants. We quite randomly picked a place called Mr Smiths which looked like a fairly standard pub from the front but in the back was a lovely area that kind of looked like a garden patio with plants going all up the walls and ceiling. I got some chicken alfredo pasta which was incredible! (And no doubt full of 2 pints of cream!) After the meal the majority of the group rushed back to the hostel, apart from Lauren and I, the only 2 either not 21 or with a fake ID. So we did a little shopping and met back up with the others at the hostel before they went on a night out in the city.
Day 3-
The final day we got up early to enjoy the final free continental breakfast at the hostel, along with some slightly weary faces in the group and then checked out by about 11- 12pm. Our first plan for the day was to visit the Smithsonian National Zoo which was a short subway journey away, and again free! The Smithsonian complex has soo many free attractions, brilliant for travelling students! The zoo was really good, obviously I enjoy anything that involves animals! It was sort of like walking around a park as there were no gates and the animal were just spread around the area. Due to the (unexpected!) snow that day we didn't get to see all of the animal inc the elephants and sea lions. But we did see 2 giant pandas, zebras, lions and several species in the primate and reptile houses. We even got to meet a little Tenrec (a bit like a hedgehog) that are only seen in Madagasgar and the woman gave an interesting talk about 'Gomez' and let us see him close up. So cutee.
After the zoo we had made sure we had time to visit our old favourite The Cheesecake factory! Despite saying all day I was going to try something different I ended up getting the exact meal as last time. Oops. But it was sooo good!
Nicely filled we headed back to the hostel to pick up our bags and set off back on the 17 hour coach back to London. Luckily I managed to get a double seat for myself the whole way and Ryans Ipad Mini provided alot of entertainment, not to mention sleeping for a large portion of the journey. Exploring is tiring!!
A big and very exciting trip to come!....
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