Hey all! Currently we're both waiting for a much-delayed train at Lynchburg, VA that'll eventually take us to the Big Easy. So, what better way to pass our time than update our blog (which needed updating anyway)? Apologies for the lack o' foe-toes; they'll be put up as soon as we get access to a CPU.
On Wednesday we drove into Philly, and finally embarked on our rail trip proper. Woo! The train ride to Washington DC was brief, and after two hours we arrived in Union Station.
The first thing we planned to do was to take the Metro system to our hotel, which was located up in College Park on the outskirts of the city (technically in Maryland, Washington DC being a tiny city-state). So, we entered the Metro system... and were confronted by ticketing machines which looked more like computers from the 70s than anything else.
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D'oh?The displays were like those on really, really old calculators; and apart from that we were presented by a mismatched assortment of buttons, labels and stickers creating varying levels of confusion. Add really long queues/ lines of grumpy DCers and... yeah. Needless to say it took a while to work them out, but after observing commuters in their local habitat we got the idea and hit the tube.
An aspect of DC that many of our American readers may know of, but our international compadres may not, is that outside of center-city there are some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the USA.. Even rivaling New Orleans. Gang violence and homicides were particularly high during the 1990s, when DC was known as the 'murder capital' of the states. To be fair, it has gotten better: crime rates have gone down drastically in the past few years, and the two of us didn't have any problems when we took the metro past the outskirts of town on our way to College Park, MD. Some neighborhoods to the east, like Prince George County (the stop right before ours on the green line), are getting worse however.
Our hotel was right next door to the University of Maryland's College Park, and was a stone's throw away from rows of suburban frat houses.
Having dropped off our stuff, we took the metro back down to DC (a day pass is $9, and is worth it if you do more than two trips in a day) and saw all the must-see touristy sites. We checked out the Capitol building, the Washington Monument, the White House, and had a brief glimpse of the Lincoln Memorial from afar.
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All of these are located relatively centrally, and all are about a medium walking distance away from each other (apart from the Lincoln memorial, which is a bit more of a trek). This is because centre DC is organized around the National Mall, which is essentially a large strip of grass which runs for about 2 miles from the Capitol in the East to the Lincoln memorial in the West. The grass wasn't quite as well-kept as the lawns of the government buildings, but hey, what do you expect?
That evening we went back to the hotel and tried out the pool, much to Dexter's delight. Such things are a bit of a novelty for those who hail from rainy Britain. Poor chap ;)
At the Capitol end there are lots of museums, conveniently close to each other, and conveniently free. So, the next day we decided to hit the museums! DC, like any good national capital, has the standard selection of National Galleries, Natural History Museums, etc. But as a wise person one said, "once you've seen one natural history museum, you've seen them all", and going by this logic, we made a bee-line for the museum that sounded the coolest: the Air and Space Museum. Good idea, because it was wicked.
It has some pretty cool stuff inside, like the Apollo 11 command module, the Apollo 11 'Eagle' Lunar lander, a walk-in section of the Skylab space station, a lunar rover, a prototype of the Hubble Telescope, a prototype Voyager probe, a prototype Viking Mars lander and some early Mercury command modules, to name a few things. And that's just the Space section. There were other interesting things, like one of the Wright brothers' first aircraft, a jet-powered Messerschmidt and some (supposedly decommissioned) nuclear missiles... but it is pretty hard to beat the Space displays. (Yes, Dex wrote this section) After this we found we has little time for anything else, so we quickly headed over to the Library of Congress, and then to the National Archives. We found the archives were closed, however, because Laura Bush was making a speech there that evening. Boo!
That evening we met up with our good friend Cristina, who is interning at PETA for the summer. We walked around the Adams Morgan district, and caugut dinner at a bookstore-restaurant-bar. Afrer dinner we heard there was a free open-air screening of the film ET down at the Navy Yard metro stop, so we headed down there and enjoyed ourselves greatly.
DC itself is a rather small city, considering it's a national capital. New York, for example, is far, far larger. The areas around the Mall are quite nice, although for some reason a lot of the grass in the parks is unkempt... as mentioned above. To the North of the museums area of the Mall you have a very small Chinatown, which soon gives way to Adams Morgan, and Dupont in the west. These areas have a 'trendy' feel, not unlike some of the more grimy-yet-trendy districts in London or Paris. Outside of these, it's pretty much grimy urban decay until you reach the far outskirts.
The next day we went back to the National Archives, and after over an hour's wait outside in the searing sunshine (again for effect, SEARING) we finally entered and got to see the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; and toured round a very interesting exhibit on the way in which the US government has tried to influence what Americans ate over the past century, particularly in wartime etc. We then walked down to the Lincoln Memorial. While we expected a dazzling view of the Washington Memorial's reflection on the, you guessed it, Reflection Pool, it was completely drained and being 'fixed'. Yes, it is high tourist season in DC atm. No, we don't understand why they chose June to fix it up either. Maybe because we were there, as drained pools became a theme in our trip. We trudged back up to the National Archives, where we waited (in vain) for a hotel shuttle to pick us up. For over an hour. Lawlcats n00bcopter phail fml. In the end we took the metro.
On Wednesday we drove into Philly, and finally embarked on our rail trip proper. Woo! The train ride to Washington DC was brief, and after two hours we arrived in Union Station.
The first thing we planned to do was to take the Metro system to our hotel, which was located up in College Park on the outskirts of the city (technically in Maryland, Washington DC being a tiny city-state). So, we entered the Metro system... and were confronted by ticketing machines which looked more like computers from the 70s than anything else.
D'oh?
An aspect of DC that many of our American readers may know of, but our international compadres may not, is that outside of center-city there are some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the USA.. Even rivaling New Orleans. Gang violence and homicides were particularly high during the 1990s, when DC was known as the 'murder capital' of the states. To be fair, it has gotten better: crime rates have gone down drastically in the past few years, and the two of us didn't have any problems when we took the metro past the outskirts of town on our way to College Park, MD. Some neighborhoods to the east, like Prince George County (the stop right before ours on the green line), are getting worse however.
Our hotel was right next door to the University of Maryland's College Park, and was a stone's throw away from rows of suburban frat houses.
Having dropped off our stuff, we took the metro back down to DC (a day pass is $9, and is worth it if you do more than two trips in a day) and saw all the must-see touristy sites. We checked out the Capitol building, the Washington Monument, the White House, and had a brief glimpse of the Lincoln Memorial from afar.
The Capitol Building, D.C.
Washington Monument
That evening we went back to the hotel and tried out the pool, much to Dexter's delight. Such things are a bit of a novelty for those who hail from rainy Britain. Poor chap ;)
At the Capitol end there are lots of museums, conveniently close to each other, and conveniently free. So, the next day we decided to hit the museums! DC, like any good national capital, has the standard selection of National Galleries, Natural History Museums, etc. But as a wise person one said, "once you've seen one natural history museum, you've seen them all", and going by this logic, we made a bee-line for the museum that sounded the coolest: the Air and Space Museum. Good idea, because it was wicked.
It has some pretty cool stuff inside, like the Apollo 11 command module, the Apollo 11 'Eagle' Lunar lander, a walk-in section of the Skylab space station, a lunar rover, a prototype of the Hubble Telescope, a prototype Voyager probe, a prototype Viking Mars lander and some early Mercury command modules, to name a few things. And that's just the Space section. There were other interesting things, like one of the Wright brothers' first aircraft, a jet-powered Messerschmidt and some (supposedly decommissioned) nuclear missiles... but it is pretty hard to beat the Space displays. (Yes, Dex wrote this section) After this we found we has little time for anything else, so we quickly headed over to the Library of Congress, and then to the National Archives. We found the archives were closed, however, because Laura Bush was making a speech there that evening. Boo!
A replica of the Apollo 11 Lunar lander in the Air and Space Museum.
That evening we met up with our good friend Cristina, who is interning at PETA for the summer. We walked around the Adams Morgan district, and caugut dinner at a bookstore-restaurant-bar. Afrer dinner we heard there was a free open-air screening of the film ET down at the Navy Yard metro stop, so we headed down there and enjoyed ourselves greatly.
Outdoor cinema in DC.
DC itself is a rather small city, considering it's a national capital. New York, for example, is far, far larger. The areas around the Mall are quite nice, although for some reason a lot of the grass in the parks is unkempt... as mentioned above. To the North of the museums area of the Mall you have a very small Chinatown, which soon gives way to Adams Morgan, and Dupont in the west. These areas have a 'trendy' feel, not unlike some of the more grimy-yet-trendy districts in London or Paris. Outside of these, it's pretty much grimy urban decay until you reach the far outskirts.
The next day we went back to the National Archives, and after over an hour's wait outside in the searing sunshine (again for effect, SEARING) we finally entered and got to see the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; and toured round a very interesting exhibit on the way in which the US government has tried to influence what Americans ate over the past century, particularly in wartime etc. We then walked down to the Lincoln Memorial. While we expected a dazzling view of the Washington Memorial's reflection on the, you guessed it, Reflection Pool, it was completely drained and being 'fixed'. Yes, it is high tourist season in DC atm. No, we don't understand why they chose June to fix it up either. Maybe because we were there, as drained pools became a theme in our trip. We trudged back up to the National Archives, where we waited (in vain) for a hotel shuttle to pick us up. For over an hour. Lawlcats n00bcopter phail fml. In the end we took the metro.
The empty reflection pool, as seen from the Lincoln Memorial. Can't get more unique than this.
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