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So after leaving our private rooms and comfy beds for the last 3 weeks we now have to get used to dorm rooms again.
We arrive at our hostel in Washington called Duo Hostel. It seems to be in a nice area and looks quite nice itself. We get checked in and get a tour around the building, it has a dining room, a good kitchen and a decent sized lounge so it seems really good. It is also only a block away from Safeways (reminds us of back home!) and 8 blocks away from all the monuments and museums. The only bad point (and it's a big bad point!) is that it doesn't really seem to have any air con or fans and Washington is having their worst heatwave for over 100 years, it's nearly 40 degrees outside!
As we got here quite late we just headed over to Safeways and done a bit of shopping before meeting a few people in our hostel and heading to bed.
After what was probably the worst nights sleep we have had (was actually dripping in sweat!) we got up early and went to check out the National Mall. The views from both ends are quite impressive with the Washington Memorial one side and the US capital at the other.
We headed to the National Archives first of all as that was closest to us and we couldn't walk for long in the heat....or so we thought. About an hour later we finally found the building, it was right near where we started so we must have walked past it about 8 times!
Inside they had different sections for different things. They had sections for the Civil War, a section for famous people and their biggest historic documents.
We started off in the civil war section where we got to see how they fought, what happened and some soldiers death certificates. After that we headed to the famous section and saw Albert Einsteins application for his visa and reports on Titanic. We then headed up to the biggest section. We saw the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Magna Carta. It was really good to see these but they were all just a large faded yellow piece of paper with writing on that you couldn't read!
Next up was the Air and Space museum. It was class. As soon as you walk in you are faced with big missiles that America and the USSR sent out into space in the missile race from years ago. They have meteorites there, the Apollo space shuttles, the old Hubble telescope and all the space suits they wore. They have a bit of the space station that they used which you can walk round and see how they lived and how little space they had for months on end, kinda like what were used to now!
In the air section they have all the planes from the 1st and 2nd world war. They have the Wright brothers plane and Amelia Earhart's plane. They have all kinds of normal planes, gliders and rockets that fighter planes fire.
There is so much to see and do that we ended up being out for about 12 hours!
Next morning we headed down to the Holocaust museum. The first exhibit we went to was a thing called Daniel's story. It's about a small boy that was taken away to a concentration camp. They have bits of his diary that they found and it takes you through his life from his childhood in Germany to going to a Ghetto and then to the concentration camp. In the end you find out that he and his dad survived but his sister and mum died.
Next up we went to a Nazi propaganda exhibit. It showed how they kept the Jews on the outside and how that in every newspaper and radio commercial they were made fun of. They also had a section on Genecide that has happened recently like what happened in Rwanda and Bosnia.
The best bit of the museum was the main holocaust exhibit. You get givin a ID card when you walk in with a Jew from the era and as you walk through you find out about their story and if they survived or not. I had an Italian who died in Auschwits by jumping off a fence and Jodie had a French women who survived by changing her name, pretending to be a Christian and hiding in someones house.
It starts off with how the Nazi's gained control of Germany and then how they starting invading other countries. They had all kind of memorabilia there. Next floor down was when they started killing all the Jews. They had one of the actual trains that they exported the Jews to the contentration camp. It was absolutely tiny and they fitted over 100 people into it. They had parts of Auschwit like the fences, the 'beds' they slept on, bits of the gas chambers, the gas pellets themselves and the uniforms that the prisoners actually wore. They had all the shoes that they collected from the dead bodies and I swear there were thousands of them.
On the last floor they told the story of how they became liberated and had photos and letters from soldiers that first discovered the concentration camps. The most touching bit was watching a video at the end of the survivors talking about the moment they were set free. One of them actually married the soldier that freed her. It was a great museum and properly pulled on the heart strings!
After all the information we took in we couldn't handle another museum so we took a walk down to the monuments and visited the Washington monument, the Lincoln monument and the reflecting pool in between the two. When stood at the top all I could think about was Forrest Gump!
Next day we headed back to the Washington monument as we missed the tour the day before but when we got there we had missed it again because we didn't realise that we had to be lined up outside at half 6 in the morning! f*** that! So instead we headed over to the White House to have a look. It was not as we expected at all, it was a tiny unimpressive building that looked dwarfed compared to everything else on the Mall, was quite disappointed!
We ventured over to the National museum of Natural History. The most impressive part was the Dinosaur bones they had. They had a T-Rex, several pteradactyls over head and a load of other dinosaurs and dinosaur eggs.
The rest of the museum was quite a let down, they told the story of how man evolved but it was just reading facts and looking at puppets and they had things about animals but again they were just stuffed animals or fakes. They also had a big section on fossils and rocks and also a section on gems which was interesting. We got a photo of the worlds most valuable gem - the Hope gem. It's worth about $350 millon and was owned by Marie Antoinette. It got stolen in the French Revolution and apparently got cut in 2 but they have never been able to find the 2nd piece.
After the museum we took a walk through the Art and Sculpture garden. They have a massive fountain there where you can sit on the side and sit with your feet in the water. After walking round for hours and it being 37 degrees it was such a good feeling soaking them in the cold water!
When we had finally recovered we walked all the way to the US Capitol building for a tour only to find out that we had missed the last one by 10 minutes! Was not impressed!
We have now pretty much done all the museums we were interested in, there are a lot of of art and sculpture museums but they just really don't interest us so were not bothering. We went to the American history museum expecting it to be really pro America and in your face but we were quite surprised. They have a huge section on Thomas Edison and how he came about inventing the light bulb which was really interesting. They also had a a section on the old school vehicles they had in America, some of them were really impressive.
Upstairs they had the very first stars and stripes flag, It was quite impressive, it was huge, full og holes due to its age and fighting around it and only had 14 stars on it.
They had dresses from every single first lady so far and a big thing about the famous Presidents including half the floor on Abraham Lincoln. They had the suit he was shot in, the last hat he wore and even a top soaked in his blood.
They had a section on the seas and had a huge gun ship from Philadelphia that is years old and things from different old sea liners. They had Titanic luggage, a Titanic life jacket used for a survivor and a camera that was used by a passenger from one of the ships picking up the survivors. There was things about the pirates and they had a lot of guns, swords, ammo and personal belongings from Captain Blackbeard.
The best thing about the museum was the war section, they had guns, ammo, helicopters, mortars, grenades, flamethrowers and medals presented to people from pretty much every war America has been involved in (and that's a lot!)
We had been walking round the museum pretty much all day and had not eaten. By the time we had finished we were both starving so went to the fountain in the Art garden again to eat our pasta. We were sat on one of the benches tucking into our long awaited food when I saw something go past my eye. I looked down to see some little s*** of a bird had shat in my food! Well not impressed!!
On our last day we just wanted to chill out. After doing museums every day we felt pretty museumed out and had taken in all the information we could. As it was the World Cup final our hostel had advertised free food for the day so we thought we would take advantage of that. We got up quite early for breakfast which was just a mountain of pancakes!
We watched the game (awful final) with a load of Germans so thank God that they weren't in it! Later on the hostel had a big BBQ for everyone. We were sat out the back with a load of people from all over just having a laugh all night, it was probably the best night in a hostel we have had so far.
We have met a few people that we are going to stay in touch with. We've met Roxana who is a French girl training to be a Doctor in DC, Grace who is an Aussie girl that is going to give us tips when we get there and Becky an English girl who has travelled all over for the past 2 years. We also met a Hungarian called Kata who gave us her phone number in case we ever head to Hungary and need a place to stay, nice of her but doubt we will take her up on it.
So we have fully enjoyed DC but now were really looking forward to Atlantic City. Here's hoping we leave with more money then we arrive with!
- comments
Becca Lovin the blog guys...sounds like ur havin an ace time & u have done so much!! Brian says sorry he's not replied to ur e-mail yet Marc...and smell ya later! Speak soon guys xxx