SO TODAY WE ALMOST KINDA NEARLY POSSIBLY MET THE PRESIDENT!!
WASHINGTON DAY! This was one of my top cities on the list of places we were visiting so being woken up throughout the night due to unbearable heat and humidity wouldn't be dampening my spirits anytime soon! We had our first camp breakfast together, a very good spread of cereal, fruit and of course, bagels with 'smear' (cream cheese to us UK folk). After the group were all fed and watered, Beca gave us a lift to the bus stop as traffic into DC on a morning is terrible so we were getting the metro. Obviously, I had to be the only one who forgot something, my camera! Grr! So after a quick run back we were on our way, not before missing bus by seconds so having to wait 20 minutes for the next, but they had wifi so I happy!
Coming out of L'enfant Plaza station, which was like a frickin maze, we scanned the streets for some sort of signs directing us to The National Mall.... There were none. Had we got off at the wrong stop?? We just picked a street and walked down it until we came across someone who I assumed looked like a local American. With my huge tourist map in hand I pointed to The Mall, she started with saying she was a local so I assumed I'd hit the jackpot and we'd be put on the right tracks.. Umm, not quite. She answered with 'oh yeah, I've lived here for years!.. But I don't know where I am either.' Umm, didn't you just say you've lived here for years sweetie? Anyway between us we figured out what road might get us on our way, it wasn't. The National Mall was the one next to us and about 3 blocks up! THANKS MISS ''LOCAL'' AMERICAN!
Turning the corner my heart skipped a beat at the sight of The National Mall, it's a strip of beautifully manicured lawns and flower beds with glistening white buildings popping up over the trees and standing proud against the blue sky.
Being stood in front of the iconic Capitol Building, which has been featured in so many classic films (usually being blown up), with the blazing sun beating down was a pretty good start to Washington DC day! We headed up to the Capitol which is the head of National Mall, ending at Lincoln, with not so much as a whisper of a breeze we came across the huge pond sitting at the base of the Capitols Lawns which welcomed a much needed cool wind. We indulged in a few shameless selfies and walked up the stairs to the Capitol itself.
It stood proud on the top of a hill with a lovely large courtyard type area with a large gold fountain and luscious green trees. From the edge, it over looked the strip of The National Mall, the Washington Monument standing tall in the distant. The Mall is about 2 miles long in total, personally I think they could condense the damn thing! That shit takes a lot of walking!
Washington Monument was next on list, the site itself doesn't actually have that much around it, but it doesn't take away from it's towering presence. It stands about 60ft high surrounded by a patriotic ring of America flags. It makes me smile at how much Americans love America and aren't afraid nor bothered about showing it, if makes me feel us Brits should really show our patriotism more than we do... It made for some pretty good photos though.
Oh god, then we went to the American Indian museum.. What a load of crap! No wonder it was free and had no queue, we should of known then! Not only did you have to start at the top floor and work your way down (which wasn't pointed out anywhere may I add!) they dedicated a whole floor just to their tack shop and none of the floors were even filled with anything!? Terrible... Nice air con though.
Next stop on The Mall was the WW2, again, another example of how patriotic and proud America are, they constructed a huge war memorial in honour of the states and soldiers who joined in the war. We had another stop off at Lincoln before headed onto the star of the show, The White House!
The walks between each site seemed to take forever, one because of the actual distance but second because of the sweltering heat! I've turned into quite the sun lover but this was too much! (Starting to get a decent colour for me though! Proving I don't have my mum's tan gene after all!) The White House was understandable positioned quite far away from the sidewalks, but I wasn't expecting it to be that far away! Excuse me Mr President I have Instagram photos to be taking you know!! Luckily my camera has a pretty good zoom on it so I worked around it and it didn't affect the experience, it's still one amazing building!
We bumped into the group outside and we all agreed we were hungry, thirsty, in need of air con and wifi! We went for food at a place called Fuel Pizza which was super cool, it was a stereotypical pizza parlour and they made fresh pizza in front of you with a selection of fresh toppings. But best of all, they had my delicious lemonade! (Seriously American lemonade is amazing!) we stuffed a Brooklyn Bridge pizza down, partially as a tribute to our New York visit partially because it was piled high with meat!
The group split up after food, half wanted to go to Natural History museum, our half wanted to go to the spy museum! A spy museum!? So map in hand and in the air I lead our little group through the streets of DC and via The White House. Stealing another look, I spotted three blacked out SUV's lined up outside... I then noticed substantially more police around... Then the actual road was closed off.... Some shit was definitely going down!?!? Me and fliss were pining to stay but the group wanted to carry on, we reluctantly followed the path to the crossing area... There was another loads of police at the side entrance.. No, shit was totally going down! So we ditched the group and hung around like groupies. One: to see what was going on, two: there was a delicious police man on a bike! We probably stayed on the street corner for only about 5 minutes, then all of a sudden every street had been blocked off by police cars, police men appeared on the sidewalks ushering police away from the roads.. IT WAS ABOUT TO HAPPEN! We readied our cameras and phones, no sooner had we done that did 4 big blacked out SUV's storm out the gate, one woman had stood on the road for a better view, her foot had barely struck the floor before the American cop loudly commanded 'MAAM! Sidewalk... STEP BACK!!!', we frickin loved it! They had no sooner gone out of site before a police escorted stream of SUV's sped past from the opposite direction, that was totes the president!! So, I mean we didn't go in for tea, cakes and a chinwag, but it was still totally excited! We also noticed after walking down the streets after there were guards on all roof tops in the perimeter and, what we assumed were, decoy cars continuously circling the city... Wheres my police escort!? I bet he was just going to damn target for the $4 pillow offer!!
After all the excitement of the president and the heat, we decided we'd seen a lot of what Washington had to offer, so we thought since not having a rest period since we got here we'd go back and have a little down time. We bumped into 2 girls from our group on the bus back who said they were heading to the pool, WE HAVE A POOL!?, when they got back and if we'd like to join. OF COURSE, it's like a frickin' oven out here! There were two cute pools, annoyingly full of kids, outside the cafe. I jumped straight in, the whole pool was actually warm from being in the sun all day but was an ideal cool down!
The group met back at the campsite at 8, we were back earlier so I thought I'd give a helping hand to Beca on the evening meal... Well I prepared a salad, but I prepared the shit out of that salad! It was delicious!! We then used Lewis's electric torch as a camp fire light and all sat around, had a few beers and got to know each other more.
DC had delivered a pretty good day! (Omg except me leaving my entire shower stuff in the shower rooms so I have nothing now!! Luckily I was due another Clarin's face wash) so we retired to our tent and got some good shut eye. Tomorrow we head to Virginia and Shenandoah National Park. Looking forward to a bit of outdoor exploring...
Until tomorrow!
x
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