Washington DC

Good Friday weekend... decided to spend it in Washington DC... set off at night... took a bus and reach NY in the early morning.... everyone was kinda in a sluggish mode from the 3 hr bus ride and the wee hours of morning... met up with another group of frens and we took the bus from NY to DC... another 3 hrs' ride....

Fri 6th Apr 07

we reached DC in the morning... and since the bus station is near the US capitol building.. we decided to go Q for the free tickets to guided tours.... the Q was super long.... around the whole garden area... and it took us about 2 hrs before we got the tickets... we were pretty shagged after the Q-ing... with our back packs and all... so we decided to go check in to our hotel first before setting off for lunch... we had only about half an hour for lunch before our tour starts... and now comes the faintz part.... because we had to walk to the capitol building.... we reached a little later than the stipulated time by about 10-15 min... and the tour groups start every 15 or 30 min... so our tour already started and we were unable to join the next group because of the limit to the number of ppl per group... 2 hrs of Q-ing for nothing! we then approached the person-in-charge... hoping to argue something out... in the end they gave us another kinda ticket... which allow us entry into the gallery... the security into the building was pretty tight... the gallery is literally a gallery overlooking something like a parliament house of sg if u ever visited the parliament.... nothing much... so we decided to take the liberty to walk around the complex ourselves... the complex is huge... both inside and outside... with lots of statues... paintings... wall art... fountains and lots of tulips in the garden...

next we decided to start our very first tour of the many museums of washington DC with the National Air and Space Museum... as with all Smithsonian Museums.... this place is huge with lots of exhibits.... very informative... from planets and the universe to the evolution of aviation to life in outer space... everything u can think of... it took us a good whole afternoon before we are done... now i know why my colleagues keep telling us 2 days isn't enough to cover the museums... cos all of them are so big and they provide so much information tat u just gotta look at every exhibit... and it can easily take up half a day...

by the time we are done with the Aerospace Museum... it is almost time for dinner... so we walked to Chinatown for some Chinese dinner.... after which we took a leisure walk to while away the time.... Washington is definitely a place of Architecture... all the buildings there are so nice... and our long walk took us to the White House! OMG... can't imagine i am actually standing right in front of it... it's once again those things tat u only see on tv on the news or some shows...

White house at night...

so that concluded the 1st day... and time to go back to the hotel and rest our feet and catch up on sleep for next day's walk...

Sat 7th Apr 07
initially we planned to go up the Washington Monument... but as with the Capitol Building... they give away free tickets early in the morning on a first-come-first-serve basis... we were unable to get the tickets... but we figured since the Monument is so tall... it is sufficient to just take photo outside.... so we proceded to Q outside the Holocaust Museum instead... there's 3 storeys of exhibits at the Holocaust Museum... from artifacts.. films... photos... it is a self guided tour which traced the events chronologically... from life in the early 1930s before the Holocaust.... to the rise of Nazi power... followed by the tyranny and genocide and concludes with the Liberation and the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust... the atmosphere in the museum was solemn with a little sadness... it is another super informative museum which could easily take up half the day... by the time we are done.... it is lunch again... had lunch at a food court... and it's the start of the day's walk again... we walk around the souvenir shops and Hardrock... then we walked past the White House again... the daylight view... then we came to the WWII Memorial... it is btw the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.... and from the long stretch of water... u can see the reflection of the Washington Monument... thus the name Reflection Pool.. how apt with the double meaning of this place... literally the reflection of the image in the pool and reflections of what happened in the past wars... next we proceeded on to the memorial that i really wanna see... the Lincoln Memorial... it was at the end of a long dirt road... up a long flight of stairs to the statue... it is really big.. and there were tonnes of pple... so we tried to get a strategic spot to take photos... next we proceeded on to the tidal basin... where a lot of them took melodramatic photos with the cherry blossom by the waters... haha... across from the waters we can see another memorial... the Jefferson Memorial... which we decided was too far off for us to walk there... so we decided to start our walk back... past tulip patches towards the train station where we decided to drop by the Arlington Cemetery... it was pretty ulu... very dark... and a little scary to think that u are actually in the vincinity of a cemetery... but it was late and it was closed... so all we could do was take a group photo in front of the gate... then proceeded to walk across a bridge that provided us with some skyline of DC... good thing we were able to catch the last train back to our hotel area... and finally be able to end our day tour of Memorials with a well deserved late dinner at IHOP...

Washington Memorial...

WWII Memorial...

Lincoln Memorial...

Jefferson Memorial...

Drama photos with Cherry Blossom...

Outside Arlington Cemetery...

Sun 8th Apr 07
we had some time for another museum before we set off on our way home... so we chose the National Postal Museum which was located near the train station... it showcase the history of mail service... mail delivery... postal transportation technology... letters... stamps... it was a much smaller museum... but equally informative...

after which was the long bus rides back to NH....

-jiahua