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A Week in Washington D.C.



May 5 - A New Adventure!


So, here I am on a new - but smaller - adventure, to Washington DC. I'm with my roommates from University, Gigi and Sarah.


We haven't done much today. We arrived a little later than we had expected, just due to travel time within Washington. The flight was really quick, only an hour and five minutes. We arrived at our hostel, which so far is amazing. The girl at the desk was named Michelle, and she made a joke about how she was the First Lady of the hostel, and I could be the second lady (since she'd seen my middle name on my passport). She said that Gigi and Sarah's names were cool, too, but Michelle was clearly the best. She also allowed us to book all four beds in our room after we explained that our fourth member couldn't make it, and we didn't want to worry about a stranger in our room.


Afterwards, we wandered outside for a bit. We saw the Smithsonian Museum buildings, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol from a distance. Then after buying a few snacks and a toothbrush (it was 5:50 in the morning when we left, I was half asleep - not my fault), we went back to the hostel for dinner.


The hostel seems to have some sort of event every night, and on Monday nights it's a big communal dinner for free. The only catch was that we had to wash our own dishes, but we're experts at that! So we decided to go. The food was nachos in honour of Cinco de Mayo. The meal was set up as a long table, and the idea was to meet new people. So we went around the room introducing ourselves. When I said we were on a short trip to celebrate graduating university, everyone clapped. We mostly talked to a woman sitting next to me named Evelyn, from New York. She was really nice and asked us all sorts of questions about what we had been studying, places we'd been, plans for next year, all that sort of stuff. She also told us a lot about places she'd been. We also talked to an Australian guy named Jason (he stressed that it was Jason, apparently people often think he's saying Justin because of his accent, but we all heard Jason). He was also really nice, and offered to do our dishes. Apparently his mother always told him to do everyone's dishes!


So then we came down to use the wi-fi for a bit, we'll probably retire to our rooms soon. Tomorrow we'll be visiting some museums and going on a ghost tour at night. Which is basically what we're doing every day.


May 6 - Diamond or Death!


A very busy day!


It started off with a pretty good breakfast at our hostel. Then, Gigi and I headed over to the Freer/Sackler Galleries, which are part of the Smithsonian, while Sarah went to the National Gallery of Art. The Freer/Sackler Galleries had Asian art - Chinese Jade carvings, Japanese painted screens, Indian statues, Islamic bowls and pots, Egyptian ornaments, and much more.

Possibly the coolest thing was the Peacock Room. It's hard to describe and I have no pictures, but I found an excellent panorama on the museum's website. Check it out!

http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/peacockRoom/pano.asp


After lunch it was off to the National Geographic Muesum. They had two main exhibits, one about Peruvian Gold, and one about the history of the magazine, which was really neat! The first room was full of editions of the magazine.


The rest of that exhibit had information about different famous scientists or explorers who had worked with National Geographic over the years.


After dinner, we went of the Ghosts of Georgetown Tour, which had lost of interesting and spooky stories. One of them was about the Hope Diamond, which is supposedly cursed. If I remember correctly, it was found in India, then lost, then ended up with Marie-Antoinette, along with some other people. Bad things happened all along the way before being donated to the Smithsonian. Long story short, Gigi, Sarah and I talked about how it would be a good punishment for criminals - make them touch the diamond. Or give them the choice, "Diamond or Death", hence the title of this post. Other stories were about an old hospital that was supposedly haunted, and the Lincoln Death curse.


The curse story was interesting. Apparently the son of Abraham Lincoln was associated with two (possibly three) other presidential assassinations. Now, my knowledge of American presidents is lacking... quite a bit. So I don't remember the names of the other presidents. But two of them were shot when the son was present (he wasn't involved, just there at the time) and one may have been poisoned (he fell sick a few days after they had contact, people are now starting to think it was poison). Either way, curse or not, this guy had some weird stuff going on around him.


The last story I remember in detail was a much nicer one, about a family with three kids and a nanny. The nanny would always blow out the candles in their rooms at ten o'clock sharp. One of those kids got the house when he was older, and hired her to help care for his own children. After she died, it was said that the candles continued to go out at ten, it even because a spectacle of sorts that the neighbours would watch. Even when the house was fitted with electricity, the lights in those rooms would go out. Eventually, there was a sighting of an old woman coming to the house and saying her work was done - this was supposedly because for the first time in a hundred and something years, there were no children living in the house. The lights stopped going out at that point.


There were a few more stories, but those were my favourites. After the tour, we returned to our hostel with very, very sore feet. Super sore.


But we're looking forward to another busy day!


May 7 - Lies and Treachery!


The day started just like yesterday, breakfast at the hostel, then we went down to the Air and Space Museum for the morning. We had to rush a little bit, but we went through most of the exhibits. I found the ones about early flying the most interesting. Here's a picture of Amelia Earhart's plane:

Washington D.C., Air and Space Museum, Amelia Earhart

We went to the Natural History Museum in the afternoon, and managed to see all of the exhibits that we wanted to see. Unfortunately the dinosaur exhibit was closed, but the other ones were great! We also saw the super unlucky Hope Diamond I mentioned yesterday. We saw the mammal and ocean rooms, as well as gems, geography, human origins, mummies and bugs. We went into the butterfly room and took a bunch of nice pictures. Here are some from my phone of the various rooms. The long picture is a display of early human skulls.


We had dinner at a nice place called The Elephant and Castle, and then we met for another walking tour, this time about the Lincoln Assassination. We started near the White House and ended in front of Ford's Theatre, where he was killed.. It was interesting to learn about Booth and the different assassinations he had planned for that night.


White House, Washington D.C. USA, United States of America

And that was the end of day three!


May 8 - Lions and Tigers...


...and bears, oh my!


Today we went to the Smithsonian Zoo, and stayed there all day. We started on the Asia Trail, where most of the animals were still hiding away. But we did see some Asian Small-clawed river otters sleeping in the sun, and we saw the clouded leopard from a distance while it was sleeping. We saw the pandas, and the new baby Bao Bao, who was only born recently. She was perched up in a tree while her mom sat below and ate. We saw her father indoors.


panda, smithsonian zoo, washington d.c.
Can you spot the baby panda?

smithsonian zoo, washington d.c., peacock

After escaping the river of children, we went and looked at the birds. They had a whole bunch of smaller exhibits, as well as a large indoor rainforest one that we could walk into, and a giant outdoor exhibit we could also walk into with ducks, peacocks, cardinals and ravens. Some robins had snuck in, too, but we don't think they were supposed to be there. We saw a peacock open up his tail to impress a female who completely ignored him. Poor guy.





When then walked by the elephants and saw them from a distance. Next was the Small Mammal House, with tons of adorable little critters, including a sunbathing meerkat. We saw the gorillas and orangutans next, where this guy decided to come up to the glass to say "Hi".





After lunch, we went to Amazonia and saw different fish, frogs and monkeys from the Amazon. Then we went through seals, sealions and the American Trail, where we watched an Otter swim and climb around some logs. We were getting pretty tired by then, but we went to see the tigers and lions. We spotted some tigers sleeping in the back, and in the lion exhibit a big male named Luke was sitting on top of his hill like he was the king of the zoo. Just as we were leaving he stood up, walking in a circle, made this weird moaning/roar sound, and then flopped into the shade. He recently fathered two litters of cubs, but they were too young to be introduced to the exhibit yet and we (safely) assumed that the mothers were with them.



We went to see the invertebrates and reptiles, where we saw a lot of snakes, lizards, tarantulas, and plenty of other critters.


We went to see the African animals then, and saw zebras, gazelles, and some snoozing cheetahs. Finally, to finish off our trip we headed back to the Asia Trail to see if any of the animals had woken up, and we saw the otters playing together in the water.





On the way back from the hostel we made a pit stop to take a few pictures of the Washington Monument before eating dinner and relaxing. Our feet hurt too much to get closer, we just sort of popped up from the subway quickly. That was it for day four! Tomorrow we have to get up stupidly early to go to the airport.


Washington Monument, Washington D.C.

PS: Guess who got sunburn because she forgot to bring sunscreen? If you guessed me, you are 100% correct. And it's a stupid sunburn on my neck where my backpack didn't cover. Luckily my arms and face are fine.


May 9 - Planes, Trains, Automobiles


So this the end of the second adventure. I'm home now, after a short plane flight and a really long train ride. Anyone who might be reading this already knows that I'm home, but who knows, maybe someday someone will be reading this and wonder why I mysteriously vanished after my last post.

So, temporary hiatus again, until another journey or fairytale comes my way. Maybe next year, who knows!



 

Edited and pictures added in June, 2019

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