Gettysberg

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DAY 5/240 - Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Today we travelled from corning to Washington D.C via Gettysburg, a town in Pennsylvania, the scene of a major battle in the American civil war. I've got to admit, whilst i respect and appreciate the sacrifice our soldiers made, wars depress me, so i don't like to delve too much into the intricacies of it all - especially American civil wars. However i can definately see why poeple who were more into this sort of thing would find Gettysburg very interesting. We went the museum which was very well done. There was heaps of artifacts like weapons and bags and furniture with bullet holes in it, which was all found in the surrounding area. Apparently the battle of Gettysburg, despite only lasting 3 days had the most number of casualties in the whole war - and one look at the landscape would explain why - its hard to see how anyone could get much cover. After a lap of the battle fields we went up to Little Round top - which is a famous landmark of the battle.

As previously mentioned, i'm a bit of an ostrich when it comes to wars, so i spent my time trying to capture photo's of a young polish child, i have named Frodo. Now it was at the maid of the mist boat ride that i pointed out to the others that i felt this child looked exactly like frodo from lord of the rings, and thus started a competition as to who could take a photo of him, when he best resembles frodo. So i'm betting the remainder of the tour will be spent trying to take photos of this unsuspecting kid (although i think that by the end he'll be a little suss). Points are also to be allocated for the photo that has a backdrop most in line with the movies - thus removing the possibitiy of getting an affiliate to go stand next to him and make out as though you are just taking a photo of them (if that makes sense).
I though that the fields of Gettysburg would provide an excellent backdrop, however like the confederates i was pretty unsuccessful.

We got into Washington and then went straight to dinner once our rooms had been sorted (there has been trouble almost every night due to our uneven numbers and unwillingness to share beds), we went out to dinner at this apparently upmarket french thing. I mean the beef it was nice but the seats were hard the salad was yuck and the dinner was small (and the french fries looked suspiciously similar to maccas chips) - it certainly wasn't worth $45 a head.

After dinner we did a tour of washington by night - this was quite painful acutally due to my tiredness. Also the time that the sun goes down is quite offputting - you think its much earlier than it is - like Melbourne over new years. I slept for most of the city tour - and you know how its just painful to keep getting woken up in an uncomfortable spot when you're hell tired. Also it was a pretty long day - we got up tihs morning in corning around 6 and we were still touring Washington at about 11pm. I think that Betty (the tour guide) sensing how tired we were all getting cut it short and took us back to the hotel.

When we got back everyone went straight to bed, but i had to sort out my contract with 3 (cancel it - they charge $20 per month for me to stay on it - and i wouldn't be using it at all whilst i'm gone). $150 USD worth of credit later, still nothing had been resolved - and my creid card had been stopped due to the number of transactions of US credit i purchased in such short time. So i can't recharge, to call back the incompetant call centre workers to sort out my contract!!!

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