Day 31 - Washington D.C.

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Washington D.C. - 32°c

After dosing up on medication last night and sleeping quite heavily throughout the night, it was a bit of a struggle to get up when the alarm on my mobile phone went off at 7am today. Thankfully after a fairly cold shower owing to the fact that I can’t get to grips with how the taps work in this hotel, I was slightly more rejuvenated and ready for quite a big day, and whatever D.C. had to throw at me!

After two slices of toast downstairs in the ‘do it yourself’ breakfast room and bumping into several of the group who were already down there, and those arriving after I did, we boarded the bus and headed off at 8am.
Owing to a bit of morning traffic, along with the distance needed to travel in order for us to actually be within the Washington D.C. city limits because of our hotel being quite far out, our first stop was the Arlington National Cemetery. It was quite a sombre sight from the moment we arrived, but as we walked through the welcoming area, gravestones were all that could be seen for as far as the eye could see. Kristina had given us a brief introduction on what Arlington Cemetery was about, how long it had been there and the symbolic nature of it all. When she informed us that over 300,000 graves of military personnel were to be found within it, I don’t think anyone could quite picture that number of graves in our heads, and for me at least, it came as a rather overwhelming sight to see so many white tombstones in line upon line throughout the grass. As with most cemeteries, it was a very peaceful, tranquil and picturesque place, with trees dotted in amongst the graves, overhanging the paths and creating archways for us to walk under and shelter from the sun.

We made our way through the cemetery and up to the ‘Tomb of the Unknown Soldier’ where guards watch over the tomb and perform a ceremonial change of guard every half an hour (every hour during winter) day and night, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, regardless of weather or temperature. We watched the 9am changeover and it was very impressive and reminded me of the ‘Changing of the Guard’ that takes place every day at Buckingham Palace back home, only without the sweltering heat that these poor guys have to deal with whilst dressed in heavy army ceremonial attire!
After watching the ceremony, we headed across to view the gravestones of JFK, his wife and two children. Alongside the gravestones was the ‘JFK eternal flame’, and as the name suggests, it’s a gas-powered flame in his memory, that never extinguishes.

Once back on the coach, we headed to the U.S. Marine Corps War memorial just around the corner, which just as the memorials last night, was very impressive in it’s size and scale, with 6 giant cast bronze statues of military personnel gathering together, helping one another to raise the U.S. flag. We took some photos before hopping back onto the coach and into the centre of Washington D.C. We got dropped off at the Smithsonian Institution Building on the National mall and Kristina told us that it would also be the same point for our pick-up later on in the day.

Once off the coach, the two Michelle’s, Lauren, Marnee, Steve and I walked up the mall to the White House. For a while we walked and still couldn’t really see anything, but eventually we spotted a large number of people standing against railings taking photos and deduced from that that we were headed in the right direction. As we reached it, the White House looked amazing behind the extremely well maintained and looked after south lawns. Years of seeing it in photos, TV shows and movies didn’t make it any less impressive as I was seeing it for the first time. It was extremely beautiful and one of the defining moments of the trip that we were all looking forward to, had finally caught up with us. We stood there for a while in awe, taking some photos in amongst the crowds before moving on, spotting a sniper on the roof as we did so! With so much security, railings, concrete blocks and barriers around the White House, we had to walk some distance in order to get all the way round to the north side to see the front side of the building, but again as we did so, the views were just as pretty as the back, and it almost seemed as though we were closer to it than we were around the back.

With time pressing on, we had to walk fairly quickly back down the mall to the Washington monument, where the two Michelle’s, Marnee, Steve, Lauren and I had a mid-day tour pre-booked to go up to the top. It was a good job I had pre-booked the tickets back home before leaving, as even though it was only mid-day, all of the tickets had already been allocated for the day and we wouldn’t have gotten chance to go up.

We met up with my friends Aaron and Wesley who I’ve known for many, many years, and their girlfriends Jen and Crissy respectively. As family friends going back many, many years, it was so great to see Aaron after a couple of months since he was last in the UK visiting family, and Wesley, his brother, whom I haven’t seen in probably 10 years, and their girlfriends whom I was meeting for the first time.

After a brief wait, the 10 of us went up the monument together on the elevator, which took 70 seconds to go up the 500ft to near the top of the monument. Once at the top, the views of Washington DC were spectacular, and thanks to a clear blue sky, we were able to see so much in the distance out of the fairly small windows, including the White House, The Capitol building, the Lincoln Memorial and so very much more. It was a beautiful clear day and we were fortunate that we were able to see for miles.

After we’d spent some time at the top and got the elevator back down again, which slowed right down (and scared us into thinking it had broken down!) at various intervals to allow for views of the internal brickwork of the monument and some murals which had been there since it was first built, we all walked part of the way down the mall before separating into two groups. I decided to spend the rest of the day with Aaron, Wesley, Jen and Crissy, so we headed for some lunch and to have some time to catch up, whilst everybody else headed off towards one of the many museums that border the mall.

Aaron had his mind set on going to Nando’s for lunch since he likes to visit it every time he comes to the UK, and the only branch of Nando’s in the U.S. is conveniently enough here in Washington D.C! Once we’d walked for what seemed like forever in the blazing D.C. sunshine, we got to Nando’s and had a good meal there. It was strange to be eating in a restaurant that’s very popular and located everywhere back in the UK, but only has one branch here in the U.S. for so many years whenever Aaron and Wesley would come over to visit the UK, it’s always been the other way around, with the UK only having one or two branches of food chains that are everywhere back in the U.S.!

After we left Nando’s we walked a few blocks down to the Hard Rock Café, where I was able to buy yet another souvenir glass, (my eighth of the trip so far!) and Jen bought a shot glass too.
From there we walked a bit further until Wesley and Crissy decided to visit the museum dedicated to where President Lincoln got shot, whilst Aaron, Jen and I went across the road to where Lincoln was taken once he’d been shot. It was a very small house, with just a few rooms downstairs, left exactly as it was on that day, but despite it’s tiny size, it was still interesting to have a brief walk around and get out of the heat.

From there we continued walking a few blocks and then across the mall over to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The 3 of us were in there for a couple of hours looking around at the different exhibits, detailing air and space history and technology from the first known flight right up to the present day and beyond. After we’d finished looking around at the exhibits, we paid a small fee and went to watch a presentation in the planetarium. It was only 23 minutes long, but it was amazing! Having never been to a planetarium before, I was so impressed and blown away by the sheer size and scale of it, and how everything was projected so clearly onto the ceiling. The movie explained how the earth began and how significant and important the clashing and collisions of the stars, planets and galaxies are, and will continue to be for billions of years into the future.

Soon after, around 5:30pm, it was time for me to pick up the Contiki coach back to the hotel from outside the Smithsonian Institution building as Kristina had promised, so I had to say my goodbyes to Aaron and Jen. By the coach we bumped into Erica who very kindly took some photos of Aaron, Jen and I in one of the gardens surrounding the Smithsonian castle.
It was a shame not to see Wesley and Crissy again to say goodbye properly, but they’d already gone to a different museum and we never got the time to meet up again. - Still, after such a great day spent with them all, it makes for a good enough reason to come back over again to visit them all sometime!

Once back at the hotel, I sorted out my purchases from throughout the day and managed to squeeze them in my magical ever-expanding suitcase, freshened up and then headed to Marnee and Michelle’s room. Michelle had headed out with some of the group, whilst Marnee had invited me over for a party for two! We sat and chatted, watched some TV, including Pinocchio and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which were being shown on the Disney channel, and ate the pizzas we had delivered to our hotel room from a nearby take away place! Oddly enough for a fairly basic, uneventful evening, Marnee and I had a great time. After a very tiring day walking the streets of D.C., it was just what was needed to chill out, put our feet up and have some great laughs too. I headed back to my room around 11pm, taking my share of the left over pizza with me to have as breakfast tomorrow!

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