Saturday 22nd April
We woke to being only 2 in the room for yet another night but we're sure that that streak would end sooner rather than later. Having nobody else in the room helped with the packing, as we could turn the lights on and make as much noise as possible. We checked out just before 6 and the kind gentleman on reception gave us a few croissants to take with us. We went slightly lazy in order to get to the train station. Charlotte signed up to Uber and through that managed to get her first free ride free, so rather than walk through all the tramps in the dark, we got a 5 minute ride to the train station for absolutely nothing. Once we arrived at the station, we checked our bag, had a short sit down and were then called for boarding. There were very few of us on the train carriage, so we made sure to test as many seats as we could before making a final decision on the ones we thought we're best and the ones that were furthest away from the screaming babies. Despite having 26 hours ahead of us on a cramped train, we always enjoyed the thrill of being on them, much more than the buses at least. Right on time, we pulled out of New Orleans station and started our cruise through the Deep South. The journey took us into Mississippi, where a few people got on at the town of Hattiesburg. From there it was onto sweet home Alabama, where, when we stopped in the town of Birmingham (pronounced with emphasis on the “HAM” of course, the train filled out to pretty much packed. We wiled away the hours reading, as there was absolutely nothing to see out of the carriage windows apart from endless trees. When we left Alabama behind us and entered the state of Georgia, we were a mere 5 hours behind the UK. Our final stop before bed time was Atlanta, which we couldn't really see because it was pitch black outside.
Sunday 23rd April
We both woke up about 6, although Charlotte owned up to waking up in the middle of the night and having a midnight snack on her snickers bar, having had possibly the best nights sleep on a coach or bus we'd ever had. It was still cramped but we probably got a good 7 hours sleep, each. We even snoozed once we'd woken up, as the scenery hadn't advanced from the constant trees overnight. We weren't particularly pleased when the conductor walked along the carriage at about the 24 hour mark and announced that we would be arriving in Washington DC an hour late. That was the start of what was going to be a pretty shoddy day. The fact we sat just outside DC’s union station for about 20 minutes for what seemed like nothing, wound us up even more. It was definitely a relief to step of the train and into the chilly, fresh air of Washington. It was the coolest weather we'd had since San Francisco and it was a welcome change from the heat and humidity of the south. The next blow of the day came when we claimed our luggage in the station. Evidently, an idiotic baggage handler had decided to pick my backpack up using a padlock attached to zips. Considering the bag weighed 20kg, the poor old zips didn't stand a chance and ripped right off. It wasn't worth the effort of complaining, so we moved a few items to a carrier bag we were using and headed off. Next up, we were horrified at the possibility of having to pay $4 for a metro card, just to use it once. That price didn't even include putting the fare on. Instead, we turned around and hunted down the buses. The bus we needed turned out to be pretty elusive. So much so that when I asked a guy working there he'd never heard of it. When I showed him the route we were taking on Google, he tried to tell me that I was wrong and the route showed the metro but it clearly didn't, it was a picture of a bus and when I proved him wrong, it shut his sniggering friend up pretty sharpish. In the end, the bus cost us a measly dollar, so it was a good decision to not go by the metro. We were dropped off a short walk from our hostel, which actually gave us a few minutes of everything being fine, which was nice. It didn't last long however. We've been travelling for nearly 2 years and have stayed in loads of hostels but never once have we had to pay to store our luggage as it's too early to check in. We made sure to make the most out of our $4 and crammed everything in the fairly small locker. With our luggage stored, we headed out onto the streets of DC. It had been with the intention of seeing some sights but after some deliberation over a coffee, we decided to head to the nearby Macy’s and pick up a new bag to replace my (or should I say, my brother’s) rapidly disintegrating backpack. It had been going since before we arrived in New Zealand well over a year ago but the few weeks in the US and their incompetent baggage handlers and border security had proved too much and it was ready to be discarded. We'd planned on being in and out of Macy’s but after almost 2 hours, we were still there. Eventually, we picked a wheelie hold-all, which would be a nice change from a heavy rucksack but just would be the same. It was a bargain though so we bought it, despite the cashiers best efforts to overcharge us, twice. As it was just approaching 3, we decided to drop the bag off and check in at the same time. This was when we were really ready for the day to end. They told us that we would have to complete our booking (of 2 nights) in separate rooms, which, considering 26 hours on a train and a pretty poor day since then, went down with us like a lead balloon. There had obviously been a cock up with bookings and we were expected to take the fall for their mistake. They wanted us to check in, to then check out the following morning, to then not be able to check in until 3pm again to then have to check out. That just wasn't going to fly with us and we made it clear to the receptionist, who was quite rude and not very accommodating, that we weren't happy. We tried to come up with some alternatives, like just move us into a different room immediately, but she wasn't having us. After a short while of us moaning, a lady came down from some stairs and tried to calm the situation a tad. All of a sudden, after finding out we were HI members (which we were under the impression you had to be to stay in HI ), we were offered a free upgrade to a private room for our second nights stay. We were hardly going to turn that down, despite the huge inconvenience of having to check out and check in still, and accepted the offer. As ever, we were making friends wherever we went and budded them fairly well with barely a thank you. We left our backpacks in the locker for the time being, as we just wanted to make the most of our $4 dollars we'd spent, so we just ditched the new bag in the room and headed back out to what would hopefully be a nice relaxed afternoon. The supermarket we'd been told to go to was awful, so that wasn't a great start but after having nothing but a breakfast bar to eat all day, the Subway we had went down a treat. From Subway, we walked to the White House, to see if president Trump was at home. We couldn't tell for sure but we guessed that due to the large security presence, he most probably was. From there we headed down to the national mall, with its centre piece, the Washington monument, which is a tall, narrow obelisk. We didn't see the worth of walking right up to it, as then you wouldn't be able to see it, so we walked along the edge of the rather grimy reflection pool, towards the Lincoln memorial. Old Abe is housed within a building that doesn't look dissimilar to the White House, only significantly smaller. Within the building, the sculptor of Abraham Lincoln is sat on a chair, looking out towards the Washington monument. There were large crowds everywhere, even quite a lot on a Sunday afternoon, which made it quite hard to get good photographs but we were still pretty pleased with what we were getting down after a late arrival and the distraction of the bag. We still hadn't finished either. After Lincoln, it was time for Martin Luther King, who was located just off the main mall, not far from the Potomac river. Mr.King’s monument was arguably the best so far. It wasn't huge but it was a very accurate sculpture, even showing the veins in his hands. Just beyond the monument was quotes from his famous “I have a dream” speech. We did intend to see even more of the monuments nearby but due to the poor quality of our map, we ended up going in the wrong direction and seeing as it was getting dark and we were a fair walk from our hostel, we thought we'd best start to head back. We paid a quick visit to a different supermarket, which was much better than our first effort, although we did stand in a queue for about 15 minutes just to buy a couple of apples and a loaf of bread. When we got back, it was a relief to know that the day would soon be over and hopefully, the following one would be a marked improvement. After such a late, large lunch, neither of us were particularly hungry but we had some plain rice, just to have had something. After the grimy train and all the sweat, a freshen up was a welcome relief. Sadly though, we had to tolerate a snorer in our room; thankfully, it was only for one night.
Monday 24th April
The man did end up snoring, all night but the ear plugs we shoved in our ears went some way towards muffling out the noise. When we woke up at half 6, we made sure to make enough noise as possible but it didn't budge the guy. At around 7, we went downstairs and checked out to check back in. It was slightly irritating to find out that we could check in immediately, which meant that the new private room had been clean overnight with nobody staying it. It made us think they could have just put us in that one straight away and saved any hassle but this hostel didn't like making things easy. When we paid the fee for the new room, it was more expensive than it had been the day before, which seemed weird but as we were in a rush, we left it for the time being. After dumping all of our things in a new room, we headed down to breakfast and wolfed down some cereal and took a muffin and a banana to go. When we exited the hostel, we deeply regretted not bringing our waterproof jackets with us, as the clouds were heavy and it was pretty clear it was going to rain any second. We didn't fancy hiking all the way back to the 8th floor of the hostel, so we braved it. We'd booked a tour at the Capitol building which was due to start at 9:20. When we had first decided to stay in Washington, we'd wanted to go on the tour of the White House however when I looked up the possibility of doing it, I found out that they'd stopped doing them for the time being. This was a tad disappointing but seeing as Trump had not long been inaugurated, maybe it wasn't a surprise. So we had to make do with a tour of the Capitol building, which was at the opposite end of the national mall to the White House. Just as we were walking around the Capitol to the visitor centre, the inevitable happened and it started to rain. To compound the misery, the centre only let a few people in at a time, so we had about a 10 minute wait standing out in the rain. It wasn't too bad in the end, as it wasn't raining too hard. Once in, we had our bags checked with no issues and headed down to the lobby. In the lobby, we got our stickers for the 9:20 tour but still had around half an hour to wait until it was time to start, so we passed the time by exploring a museum area and then appreciating the numerous statues that were dotted around. They all had which state the subject of the statue represented, the highlight of which was King Kamehemeha, who, maybe obviously, represented Hawaii. Eventually, the time came to queue for the tour. We ended up starting over 10 minutes late, probably because the tours run every 10 minutes and the film we were shown to start the tour, was 13 minutes long. The film was just 13 minutes of “The United States of America is the greatest and only country in the world” which goes down well with the hordes of children on field trips but it doesn't really go down well with the foreign tourists, like Charlotte and myself. It did give a background on the Capitol building and the government structure within the United States, which was a handy precursor to the actual tour. After the film, we all filed out and were separated into tourists and school children, which made the tour a lot more bearable. Once we were in our group of about 15 or so, we were all asked where we were from and the tour guide, Regina, seemed to have never heard of the UK but she may have just misheard us. We started the tour in a room that was underneath the main dome of the Capitol, which contained the centre point of the city of Washington DC. The compass on the floor there divided the city up into 4 quadrants of Northwest, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast. This can be seen on the road signs of the city and may, if your completely incapable of using landmarks, help with navigation. Within the room, were some more statues and as we progressed they started to get more and more famous, although within this first room, there were none that we'd had ever heard of. The second room on our visit was directly above the one we had just been in and was called the rotunda, as it was the room who's roof was the actual dome. Finally, the statues started to become a bit more recognisable and we could easily make out Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln and Dwight.D.Eisenhower. Regina told us about the room and also about the 8 huge paintings that adorned the walls of the circular room. Only, she did it in an American way. She described one of the painting, or the one in the ceiling, I can't remember, as the most famous painting in the world that's in a building of paintings. It seemed a pretty ignorant thing to say considering some of the other works of art around the world but we didn't call her out in it. Anyway, we'd never seen or heard about it until then. The large painting on the wall depicted scenes from the American war of Independence, which was of course fought against the English. From the Rotunda, we moved into our final room, which was where the House of Representatives used to be. After a while, it became too full, cramped and noisy, so they moved just down the hall in to bigger offices. Again there were yet more statues that had started to become a wee bit more obscure again. After seeing the 3 rooms, our 45 minute tour was done with and we were led back to the beginning by our tour guide. We hadn't seen the actually House of Representatives or the senate but, if we wanted, we could pick up passes to do so. Seeing as we were tight on time, we didn't bother. By the time we left the Capitol building, it had stopped raining and we had a nice dry walk along the national mall to our first museum. We'd picked 3 to visit out of many and deliberately avoided the art ones. First stop was the national air and space museum, which contained numerous exhibits about space shuttles, the space race and flight in general. We spent an hour or so exploring the exhibits before getting a bit bored and heading off. As we couldn't take any food with us to the Capitol, we'd had to leave lunch back at the hostel, so seeing as midday was approaching, we started to head back for some food. We made a quick stop in an attempt to get Charlotte some new jeans but ended up failing miserably.
After lunch, we trudged though the rain back towards the national mall and headed for the museum of American history, which, in the end, didn't contain many interesting exhibits. Although the one with Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street was worth a chuckle. After our second museum, we walked along to the Washington monument, where we could get a photo of the White House in the rain, before turning back on ourselves and heading for the National Archives. This was to be our final stop of the day, as we were pretty tired and the constant rain was starting to get us down. It actually turned out to be the most interesting of the museums we visited, with clear exhibits that covered a lot of bills and amendments. One great fact I picked out was that it took 106 less to repeal prohibition than it did to sanction it. The final visit in the archives was to the big three exhibits of the bill of rights, the constitution and the declaration of Independence. They were busy and a bit of a let down as they weren't actually the genuine articles, the room they were in was so dark you could hardly see them and the writing on them was so faded we just had to take their word for it that there was anything in them. And we couldn't take photos but we did get the memories. I know I sound very negative but we did enjoy ourselves. We tried in another shop for some jeans on the way home but with none Charlotte liked, we left empty handed again. We got back and were relieved to take the weight off of our feet, so much so that Charlotte succumbed to sleep. We managed to rustle up a dinner of rice and veg which filled us up nicely.
We'd enjoyed DC, It had been nicer than we'd expected but we could have done with a bit more time there however, given a week, I think we still would have struggled to cram everything in.
"Oh brother are you going to leave me waistin'away..."
James and Charlotte
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