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View from our Hotel window
That's the White House behind all those trees! :) The answer to that is way too many!!
We tagged along with Paul to Washington DC where he was attending a conference. We drove from Milwaukee, which means we get to technically add another few States: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia (I think that's all the States we drove through) to our travel diary!
It took 13hrs and Paul drove the entire way. When we got into the city of Washington at about 11pm/12am, our Mapquest directions weren't all that helpful. It was pouring with rain (only for the time we were completely lost mind you!!) and we accidentally went down a one way street. We even got pulled over by a cop on a bicycle! Luckily I think we pretty much looked and sounded like a bunch of lost tourists, so he didn't give us a fine, just reiterated the fact we almost got t-boned by going down a one way street!! Ah, yep, we realised that when a taxi came flying around the corner honking his horn at us!!
Washington was a lot more than we expected. We really enjoyed it, and I'm glad we made the extra stop there as it definitely wasn't
somewhere I had thought of going to. There is so much to do if you have the time.
Our hotel we stayed in (thanks to Paul and the Medical College of Wisconsin) was directly across the road from the White House, and when you looked out the window, the Washington Monument was just down the road. On our first night, we heard tons of sirens outside our window and wondered what was going on...we looked out and there was a big parade of official vehicles going down 15th Avenue. They had Police Harley's, Police cars, big black SUV's, limos, all driving down the street making the biggest racket just to get the President down the road. In the SUV's, the secret service guys just stare out the window at everyone...it all looks so official! All we kept thinking though, was if you didn't make such a big deal, noone would even know the President just drove down the street - wouldn't that make it safer for him?!?!
So on our first day, we actually caught a train into Maryland (yep, another State to add!), to an Irish Pub in a small town called Bethesda which was the only
place we could find nearby that was showing the Cricket World Cup Final. We walked in and there were abot 100 Sri Lankans and only about 10 Aussies. Lucky we thumped them hey?!?! Was a fun day, and Paul was even presented with a box of tea from some Sri Lankan dude claiming to be the Diplomat for Sri Lanka presenting a congratulatory gift to Australia. We finished up our long day of drinking with another couple of beers on the rooftop bar/restaurant at our hotel which had great views of the city at night time.
The next day Jimmy and I (in the absence of getting to go to Magic Mountain in LA) went to Six Flags America which is in Baltimore, Maryland. Was so much fun, but my favourite ride (you got tilted back so you were lying flat on your back and then twisted around on this rollercoaster like you were flying!!) broke down, so we only got to go on it once. But they had heaps of crazy rollercoasters...was a lot of fun.
So our final two days we spent doing the Washington tourist stuff...and my gosh, we didn't realise there was quite so
much to do!!!! There are around 30 memorials to wars and/or US Presidents, about 6 other monuments/buildings to see, approximately 40 museums/zoos to go to, plus the National Archives, Arlington Cemetery, and the rest of the city to have a wander around! Needless to say, we did not get through it all!
Our first day we had a look at the White House, Lincoln Memorial, Reflecting Pool, Vietnam War memorial, Korean War memorial, WWI memorial and the Washington Monument. Then we went the The Mall, which is about 2 miles of museums! It's great too, because most of them were free - even the zoo! We had a look in the Smithsonian Castle which was interesting, and then went to the Air and Space museum which was bigger than we thought. We ended up spending the rest of the day there...Jimmy was a big fan and wanted to go back the next day too!! 😊
We went out that night in Washington to a pool hall, and then when we went to kick on, everything was closing...most places in the US shut between 1-2:30am!!!!! So we ended up going to Chinatown and getting a lock-in at a Chinese
Restaurant until about 4am!! Not quite what we had planned... 😊
The next day Jimmy and I went to Arlington Cemetery, which is a 624 acre military cemetery, just over the Potomac River in Virginia. Wow, that place is massive! We spent a few hours there before going to have a look at the Capitol building which is a very impressive building, and then to the National Archives, which was field trip central...aaaaagh!!!!!!! Was kinda interesting, but we had to line up for about half an hour to get in, and I think it's a place that would be more interesting having grown up in America, as I'm sure it's something they're taught about every year at school. We were more impressed with the Magna Carta which was on display there rather than the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, (they are so worn out that you can't read anything on the page) mind you, everyone else seemed to walk straight past it! That's Americans for you hey...it's all about them! 😊
All in all though Washington was great...mum you would absolutely love it I think!
On the day we were to leave, Paul was going
to drive us to the airport. When we checked out though, the street our hotel was on was totally blocked either end by Police cars and policemen because again, the President would be coming by soon. Um...this was the where our car was parked in a garage under the hotel. It was 9:30am and they told us we couldn't get our car until 11am!! Bloody Bush!!
Our flight was at 12:25 and we didn't know how long it would take us to get to the airport by train, so we left straight away and had to leave poor Paul to wait for his car. We got to the airport quite quickly, and thank goodness, because our flight had been rescheduled to leave at 11:15!! We pretty much just made it. It was then we learnt our lesson to reconfirm flight times! 😊
So we found out later from Paul that George W was in the Hotel next door to us for some meeting and that hotel shared the same carpark as us so all the secret service and the cars needed to put on the big hoo ha, were in that carpark and that's why it was closed.
Paul didn't get his car back until 12pm, and the poor thing had to then drive 12-13hrs back to Milwaukee on his own!! Like I said before...bloody president! Seriously...who does he think he is???
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Fiona
non-member comment
so jealous...
hey guys, you have no idea how jealous these blogs make me haha i really wanna go overseas! sounds like you're having a blast look forward to hearing more take care xoxoxoxo