Washington, DC

The Megabus was awesome! Getting to New York was a breeze, and the Megabus was easy, convenient and way cheap. I slept almost the entire way. I was exhausted from the night before. Like I said, always a good time with Miranda. But I also had to stay up and write. I’m slow at posting. Anyway, I got to DC, called Miranda’s sister, Nina, and she told me to take the red line over to her place. Again, super easy transportation. She picked me up, we had lunch, and hung out for a while. She lives in Bethesda. A lot like Stamford, nice, cute, but nothing really new. I called Mike to see if he could hang out while I was in town. Crazy enough, he lived right across from Nina. Small world. I hung out with Mike and Sun that night and talked about what to do the next day. There’s a lot to do in DC. A LOT. I’ll definitely have to come back for a week or so just to do all the stuff I want to do.

The next day I woke up and took the train into DC. I saw the Capitol, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, National Archives, the White House, Jefferson Monument, Old Post Office, and… I guess I don’t remember any other sites. I walked a lot that day, from the capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, and back. That’s about 2.5 miles each way. Thank goodness for my Keens. I started off at the botanical gardens. Not very impressive. The one in Chicago is much better. Perhaps because nothing was in bloom at the time, and everything just looked like green shrubbery.

I haven’t taken many pictures on this trip, but I feel like I more made up for it today. I was a little upset that I didn’t have the Kroeschell truck with me though. I could’ve gotten so many good ones! It’s ok though since I’m planning on going back. Most pictures I took were of monuments and such. I don’t know why I didn’t go into any museums. I guess I thought I’d see the monuments then go into the buildings. But everything closed at 5:30. I did walk into the national archives. I saw the thin, faded, and unreadable Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. And a lot of other stuff that was uninformative. I guess I should have known better. Such a big building with little of it you can see on the inside.

The Old Post Office was pretty cool. I went up into the self guided tour of the tower, got to see a good overview of the city. I wanted to go inside the Newseum, but I thought I’d get it on the way back. And the newspapers from all 50 states posted outside made me want to cry. 9/11 sucks. The White House was… white. 

At this point, I grew a little bored. I was by myself and it was boring. If at any point I found something interesting, I couldn’t share it with anyone. But I walked on hoping for something worthwhile. The Washington Monuments was closed because of the big crack in it from the earthquake. It’s ok though, I didn’t feel like going in it anyway. The Lincoln Memorial isn’t as cool as I thought it would be. It’s huge, and empty. Maybe I don’t get the point of it, or maybe I was still bored. The reflective pool was under construction, so I couldn’t picture Jennay and Forrest. It was clear as mud. Hah! Now I sound like Barry.  

One the way back, I stopped at the Korean War Memorial. That made me really sad too. Thinking of all these people that went to all these wars, whether by choice or by draft. I thought of how they left children fatherless and mothers to bury their children. It all felt wrong. The fountain said “Freedom is not free”. Well why not? Why does it have to be fought for? Why do people have to die for it? It shouldn’t be that way. Do we make it that way? I don’t know. But I felt saddened by the idea and sorrow for everyone involved. DC left me sad and lonely. Next time I go I’ll just look at cool stuff like the international spy museum and air and space museum. Yep, I’ve got nerd written all over me. I just like proving it over and over again.

On the way back to the metro, I couldn’t help but see all these huge buildings that did… well, a lot of nothing. Huge building for agriculture, or printing, or god knows what. They were pretty though. I ended up at the capitol again and asked a guy to take a picture of me next to the capitol. He happened to be Asian, and I happened to get 6 or 7 photos from him. At least I’ll get to pick the ones I like. I should’ve taken a picture of him. And then a creepy guy came up to me and started chatting, started being more creepy, so I decided it was time to head back and call it a day. I met up with Mike and Sun again for dinner, had some delicious cupcakes and then packed up for the flight back home.

By the way, I got through security with a huge bottle of eye contact solution. Not that I was trying to clean the pilot’s eye contacts or anything, but jeez. They make this huge fuss about security and liquids and shoes and nail clippers and then I get through with what I had. I don’t know about you DC… I’ll have to give you another whirl.

09/12/11