Washington DC

2nd of July, Thursday

Washington DC. The capital of the United States. And I saw it today!

  We got up pretty early, had some horrible breakfast, and soon enough we were on our way to the Arlington Cemetery. That was the first sightseeing adventure we had in DC, and I have mixed feeling about it. I kinda think it's cool to see JFK's grave, and a changing of the guards at the grave of the unknown soldier, but at the same time, having a tour with comfy, non-stop bus sevice and live commentary in a cemetery is just morbid. I mean, it's supposed to be a quiet place to honor the diseased, not to make a tourist attraction out of it. But anyway, it's good we went there, it was something different.

  After a few hours there, we got on the bus again, and at 1 pm, we were dropped off at the Space and Air Museum downtown. We were given 5 hours of free time to tour the city in groups of 4. I was with Kika (Slovakia), Nike and  Luca (Germany).

  We were in the space museum for an hour, then the others had lunch, and finally, we strted tourinf the city.

  We walked to the Washington Monument, and took some funny pictures there. Afterwards we walked over to the White House. It was very interesting. I wouldn't want to live in a house that's visited by countless tourists daily. 

  Our next stop was the Lincoln Memorial to take even more pictures. By this time, our feet were worn and aching, so we took a public transport bus to the Discover America bus meeting place. It was surprisingly clean, fast and cheap. I miss public transport!

  The curfew was 6 pm, so the chaperones were surprised that we were there 10 minutes early. The counted with 40 extra minutes because people are always late. Not this year! This gave us extra time to do things. 

  We had a quick dinner at the same mall as the day before. At 8, we were on the bus again, heading back to DC. We did a monuments tour, we saw the WWII Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial again, and the Jefferson Memorial.

  It was 10:30 when we got back to the hotel, so we went straight to bed. We were very tired from a very busy, funfun day.

  I liked DC. Not as much as NYC or Philly, but it's pretty nice. I thought it was very dirty, but the architecture, the Smithsonian museums and such were beautiful.