Obama-ville.

I must have like PMS or something. I feel like since I left Orlando I’ve just been really moody and sensitive. I mean, fair enough that when I was dropped off at the Orlando Airport that I cried – best case scenario is that Jess gets to take a mini vacation in the next month and I see her again – we have hypothetical plans for said meet up but it isn’t set in stone and it’s dependant on a few other things. Or perhaps one day I’ll come back to the US. But the reality is that I might never see her or any of the people who I meet again. That’s the reality, I’m not trying to be negative, I’m being realistic. I might go home, get settled into ‘real life’ and it just might not happen. It’s not like farewelling a family member or a friend who lives a short flight away. I think it warrants being sad about. But then when I arrived in Washington DC, I was once again feeling really, really emotional. I got on the bus that was to take me from Dulles Airport into the city and it was packed and people were being really rude and ignorant and had all their stuff in the aisle and I had to like, LIFT my suitcase above their stuff in the space of the tiny bus aisle and I felt like saying ‘MOVE YOUR FUCKING SHIT, I’M TRYING TO FIND A SPACE TO STAND IN HERE.’ I literally was teary – yes I know, not really a big deal, I had to stand, not the first time I’ve done it and won’t be the last. It’s not like I’d typically get upset over this sort of thing! And then I was dropped off at the metro station and had to get the metro north a few stops and it’s the kind where you load money onto your ticket and you use it when you get on and when you get off and it takes off the requisite amount and it didn’t work and I just wanted to find my freaking hostel and get inside because I was hot and tired and hungry and pissy. And the lady from the metro station asked ‘where did you come from?’ meaning what station – to work out how much money I should have on there – and in my moment of teariness I just could NOT remember what the name of the station had been and I said tearfully ‘Australia! I don’t know!’


Finally, I got out of the damn station and found the hostel, it was a few blocks away. I had to wait a while to get checked in because there was a bit of a back up but that was okay – I was sitting inside on a couch. Check in was fine, was taken to my bunk – bottom bunk, yay! – and I was able to get my laptop hooked up with the wireless to use Google Maps to find the nearest grocery store. The hostel was in a visually really cute sort of historic area, lots of old buildings, that style where you go up some steps to get in the front door and then there’s a lower level which is at street level, you know? I gather it is also in the Hispanic/Latin area; the nearest grocery store turned out to be, like an international foods place (read: kinda weird food). The whole hostel was really hot – it had these mini cooling units set out sporadically where if you’re like RIGHT in front of it then you’re cool but anywhere else and it hardly hits you. The dorm room was insanely hot and I was on the opposite side of the room from the tiny cooler. Thank Goodness I was super tired otherwise I never would’ve gotten to sleep.


I should prelude my round up of the things that I saw/visited in DC by highlighting to Americans/British people studying in America reading that my knowledge of American History and politics is pretty minimal. I know that Obama is the head honcho, I know that George was the first head honcho, my knowledge of Watergate is from seeing the movie Dick, I mostly recognised things in DC from the movie Forrest Gump. You recognise things but you don’t quite understand the extent of their importance in history.


I started out my morning by getting the metro to Smithsonian station, where I wandered along The Mall where all of the Smithsonian Museums are. I took some photos at the Smithsonian Castle, then headed to the Air & Space Museum which is evidently the world’s most visited museum. I figure hey, if it’s free... why not? I don’t know. I’m not really into museum style learning. You could spend a whole day in one of these museums if you were actually going to walk through every bit and read every little piece of information and take it all in. I did the speedy tour – I took some photos of cool looking things, found the section on planets to see what they had to say about Pluto (so sad. I’m still upset. Pluto is a real planet, dammit!) and that was pretty much it. I walked back in the other direction along the Mall to the American History museum and spent a little more time there but still didn’t look at everything in detail. It was soooo crowded – there were zillions of like, school age groups and just walking through was giving me Wizarding World flashbacks. I had lunch in the cafeteria and paid a ridiculous price for a cheeseburger (it was nice eating beef. I’ve been eating chicken chicken and more chicken) and a cookie and diet coke.


My next stop was the White House. Embarrassingly I saw the Treasury Building first and I thought that was it and I was like, um, where’s all the security and stuff? Then got closer and could see the sign lol. I kept going and THEN I found the White House. My ‘that’s it?’ reaction occurred from the south side where you’re really, really far away. I set out to check out the north view – stopping at a Starbucks on the way (I shall claim it to be the Starbucks that Obama would go to) to not only get a cold drink but to just escape from the heat for a little while. The northern view is more impressive, I must say. After bidding Obama farewell, I spent the afternoon literally wandering around in the Penn Quarter, checking out things like the Ford Theater, various government buildings, the Old Post Office (where, seriously, to get into a crappy little food court I had to have my bag go through an X-Ray scanner. I’ve never been bag checked so many times in one day before.) By this point I was EXHAUSTED and I had a lot still planned for the day – the main thing being that at 6pm I was going on a walking tour. So I decided to go to the park near the Washington Monument across the road from where the tour was leaving and chill. I sat on a bench doing nothing but people watching and listening to music for 30 minutes, then I laid down on the grass and I think I actually cat napped. My feet were grateful for this more than an hour of downtime.


The walking tour was akin to those that I did in Europe; you don’t pay anything upfront, you’re ‘morally’ meant to tip but I suppose how much you tip is really up to you. In Europe people paid between 5 – 20 in whatever currency it was. Anyway, for me, I really wanted to do this tour because if I went and looked at a lot of these historical monuments on my own it would be like ‘oh okay, so it’s a big stone thingy high in the sky. Awesome. Snap. Next.’ The walking tour goes for about two hours but in that time you only over just over a mile – you stop, the guy talks about places, you’re walking fairly slowly – it’s family friendly, it’s advertised as being fine for kids. Through the course of the walking tour not only did the guide, Christopher, talk about the actual monuments that we visited but when we could see things like the White House from afar he talked about it, also the Capitol and Smithsonian and just generally about DC and its history. We physically went to the Washington Monument, the WWII Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial... I know I’m leaving something out. The sky had been darkening throughout the tour and just as we arrived at the final stop at the Lincoln memorial it started to pour with massive thundering going on as well. Everyone who had been in the vicinity of the monument being a tourist clambered up the stairs and sheltered in the undercover area at the top where the noise was deafening between all the talking, shouting, tour guides trying to control their groups and the rain and thunder. I bid farewell to Christopher giving him $5 (probably a really minimal tip but I saw a guy with a family of 4 give him $10 so I felt better) because there’d been a break in the storm. The walk to the closest metro wasn’t short – surprising that they’d actually plan this tour to end in a random place away from public transport – but it took me through the cute area of George Washington University and then I had the pleasure of boarding the metro at a station called Foggy Bottom.


By the time I got back to my hostel it was after 9pm and I was starving and proof of how starving I was is evident in that my two minute noodles were DELICIOUS and I really don’t particularly like two minute noodles – I don’t even know why I’d bought them the afternoon before, really. The next morning I set out to the metro station taking a different route to try and find this other grocery store I’d Googled – wayyy better than the other random one. Seriously, I don’t know if Australia is expensive or if the US is just cheap. My biggest weakness in any grocery store is the bakery department. In the US, they have like a whole section with donuts and pastries going at like 60c each. RIDICULOUS. In Australia, they’d be like $2 to get a single one. Anyway so yes, weakness + really cheap = me buying food that I really don’t need but that I just want and it’s like ‘shit, for 60c, why not?!’ Breakfast in hand, I headed for the Capitol area, where I went to the Library of Congress (one of the most ornate buildings I’ve ever been in; I think the only more spectacular building was the Palace in Bucharest) and to take some photos from the outside of the United States Supreme Court and the Capitol.


I got back on the metro to spend the rest of my day in another state, to be technical – in Virginia, just over the river. I started out at the Arlington Cemetery, which I hadn’t really heard of but Jess had recommended and then I saw it in my guidebook and so I figured why not. The grounds are really huge and to be honest I was having a lazy day – my feet were already sore, my knees were sore, my thighs were sore – so I paid $7 to go on the little train thing that takes you around the massive grounds and stops at the main locations and narrates other ones along the way. I wasn’t going to be caring enough to go and walk around and look at every person of notes grave site so this thing was pretty much perfect, taking me to the two main things that I wanted to see – being the burial place of JFK and his family; and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. JFK’s was quite spectacular with like, a flame thingy and the eeriness was particularly poignant – people are chatting and talking and then they go past the sign that says to be respectful and quiet and they actually pay attention to it.


The Tomb of the Unknowns is visited mostly for the Changing of the Guard which occurs every half hour – hour depending on the time of day/season. The Tomb is guarded 24/7 in all weather and the whole situation is very dramatic and taken very seriously, guarded by real trained military in a proper ritual ceremony. From a few places around the cemetery there were pretty views of DC, I guess it’s a bit more elevated, but unfortunately it was kinda hazy so my photos didn’t really turn out well :(


After leaving Arlington Cemetary I headed to the Pentagon – I should say, I TRIED to. I got out at Pentagon Station and was met by signs telling me that photography is not allowed, with security guards everywhere. You can’t go in unless you’ve prebooked a tour. There is like a Pentagon Memorial there from 911 but there was all this security going on and I couldn’t get through the way you had to go to get to it so I don’t know what the hell was going on but I didn’t care enough to try and make it happen and instead made my way straight back down to the metro to go to the next station, Pentagon City – which essentially is a mall. I had my first Panda Express experience and yes I had the orange chicken which was fantastic. The mall itself was just a mall, really. I had Starbucks before I left making it a rather expensive trip to attempt to look at the Pentagon.


A part of me thinks I should’ve done a bit more research and then perhaps my time in DC would’ve held more meaning, in a wider historical context. I still really enjoyed it – I know enough and I’m generally cultured enough to understand the importance of the things I was seeing and the walking tour was a highlight, I guess because I really was provided with the sort of information that I like to hear – just like how in Europe all of my New Europe walking tours were city highlights for me. Walking through the streets near the White House and the Capitol I felt very... insignificant. These men and women hold such wider power. For all I know, the guy who ordered at Starbucks before me is some highly important person in the Obama administration and he’s responsible for some policy which will affect not only the United States but the wider globe. I enjoy the concept of making it all more real – when I was in London and they pointed out where Charles and the family live when they’re around, it was a case of taking the unreal and turning it into something more tangible, which I greatly appreciate.


I wish I’d had the chance to go out in DC but there really didn’t seem to be much of a party culture at all; even at the hostel people were sitting around drinking beer but not really going out. A couple of British girls I’d been chatting with, they went out on my last night and they said that everyone was looking at them like ‘why are you dressed up, where are you going?’ as though going out is an abnormal thing to do. It would’ve been cool to go to a bar near the White House and have a cocktail and think that I’m drinking with Obama’s buddies.


Next stop after Washington was Philadelphia – I’m finishing this entry on the bus leaving Philly. So hopefully I can catch up in the hours ahead. :)