I went to Washington D.C. from Thursday 07 Feb to Monday 11 Feb to visit my friend Diana and to be touristy in the capital of the US.
As I had never been to the US before, and having heard lots of stories, I was somewhat worried about passing through customs and immigration. Turned out it was fairly painless, the only snag was having to declare exactly how many euros I was carrying. I know about the euro to dollar rate at the moment and all that, but sheesh!
Diana picked me up at the airport. She lived in a small town called Reston, about halfway between Dulles International and Washington D.C.
We had dinner at Diana's before going out shopping for cold weather gear. My internal body clock was telling me it was 02.00, so I was feeling very sleepy. I probably wasn't the best company.
Friday morning Diana drove me to the metro at West Falls Church before heading off for work. The metro into D.C. was very crowded, so much so that at one point it would stop running. The train wouldn't start moving again, and the train driver was screaming over the loudspeakers to get people to stop leaning on the doors. Living in Holland, this did not faze me...trams can be amazingly full here as well. I got off at Farragut West and started walking towards the White House. Diana had given me pointers on a standard "circuit" that some of her previous visitors had used when visiting Washington for the first time, so I had planned on walking that for the first day.
Walking past the White House, I was surprised that it was so small, and so close to the public sidewalk. I spent some time at the Washington Monument, trying to get a good picture. The size of the thing was very impressive, considering that it was built in the 1800's. The tours were sold out when I got there, though, so I didn't get to go into the monument. I carried on down towards the other memorials.
I walked down to the WW2 memorial, and past the reflecting pool to the Lincoln Memorial. The size of the Lincoln statue surprised me. I had thought it would be smaller. Next I visited the Vietnam war memorial, and the Korean war memorial. I continued the circuit around the small lake, stopping at the FDR memorial before ending up at the Jefferson memorial. I continued up the Mall to the US Capitol building. I didn't get to go inside, as there were no-one at the booth were they sold the guided tours. Maybe there were no tours that day... I walked back along the Mall, making a quick stop at the Museum of the American Indian. It was located in a fancy building, but the museum itself was fairly boring.
One thing I did find hilarious at the Mall was that they put small flags on the lawns around the monuments which looked exactly like the small flags you use to mark mines in a minefield. I'm probably slightly colored by the sort of work I do. While walking at the Mall I couldn't stop myself thinking what a great reference point the Washington Monument would be for artillery ranging.
I continued on to the Air and Space museum, spending a few hours walking around. It was a nice museum with lots of interesting items, although I was left with the feeling that they had prioritized presentation over information content.
At this point I was feeling really hungry, so I walked down to Chinatown to find some place to eat. I had a burger made out of buffalo at a specialty pub. I had never eaten buffalo before, so that's one more notch in the animal-counter. I felt slightly guilty for drinking Löwenbrau in the US, so I finished off with a Samuel Adams, just to taste some local brew (I was pleasantly surprised).
Before going back, I did some shopping at Macy's, although I was a bit confused as the sizes for clothes seemed to be very different from Europe. I took the metro back to West Falls Church, where Diana picked me up.
In the afternoon, we went shopping at Rei, which is a nice chain for outdoors equipment. I bought an amazingly cheap Mountain Hardwear soft shell jacket. During my stay over the weekend, I found prices for clothes in general to be very low. We finished off the evening by eating at Chipotle -a mexican fast food chain. Eating there was fairly unpleasant, since there were lots of screaming high school kids around us. I suppose hanging out at the mall is what they do on a Friday night.
Saturday morning we started off fairly late driving into Arlington to look at the Marine Corps memorial (aka the Iwo Jima Statue). We continued on to the Air Force memorial, passing the Pentagon on the way. After a brief visit, we drove on to Arlington National Cemetery, where american soldiers from all the wars since the civil war were buried. We walked around for a couple of hours, looking at the main monuments like the JFK memorial and the tomb of the unknown soldier. What I found most impressive about the cemetery is the size of the thing. It took a while to drive past it. Around 300.000 people are buried here. I wonder what they will do when they run out of room. Recycling plots is probably not very PC.
After visiting the cemetery, Diana took me on a small road trip to the outskirts of Washington D.C., and we had lunch at Great Falls Village. We walked for a bit in the Great Falls State park and looked at some rapids and some minor waterfalls.
Sunday morning we started off by driving into DC, parking at the Mall. I found it weird that it was so easy to drive into the very center of the city and find free parking. We walked over to the Spy Museum, which is one of the newer museums in DC. It's not part of the Smithsonian, so you have to pay 18$ to get in - expensive in DC, but if you compare it to prices at museums in Europe fairly normal. The museum showcased spy equipment through the ages and told stories about some famous spies. The museum wasn't all that big, so we finished it in about an hour. We made a quick run through the Natural history museum before walking over to the Botanical gardens. The botanical gardens weren't that interesting (I live in Holland, plenty more to see here...), but they were having a minor orchid exhibition, so I got some nice pictures from that. The gardens are probably more impressive in summer, when there's stuff also in the outside part.
We walked over to the Air and Space museum to watch an IMAX screening of "Fighter Pilot - Operation Red Flag". This was surprisingly cool. Good action-packed IMAX flick with some really nice shots. Better than the "Blue Angels"-thing they're showing at the Omniversum.
Later we drove back to Diana's place so she could pack for her trip to Whistler. We had dinner at a Korean barbecue place. I don't have all that much experience with eating with chopsticks, so I got some "Training wheels" for my chopsticks - a brightly colored orange plastic thing to keep my chopsticks apart. Hopefully I didn't embarrass Diana too much.
We finished the evening by going to a karaoke-place with private booths. This was the sort of place where you rent a booth with microphones and karaoke-equipment, and then you can sing without anyone else hearing how much you suck - which worked out for me...
Monday was the departure day, going back to Holland. We took a taxi to the airport, arriving around 10.00, which was a problem, as my flight wasn't until 17.55. I checked my suitcase and hopped onto the shuttle to the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space museum next to the airport. This museum had some fairly interesting exhibits, like the "Enola Gay" that dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, and a space shuttle. I managed to kill a few hours there before going back. I didn't see any of the IMAX movies as I had already seen the ones they were showing. I did try the "space walk" simulator. It wasn't a big experience. You put on some 3D-glasses, and get into a box, then they lift the box into the air and shake it for a bit while showing blurry pictures of the international space station.
I got back to the airport with the shuttle and went through the security gate without problems. Right behind me, though, they stopped a woman with a BIG folding knife in her purse. Scary stuff, good thing there's security checks...
I was a bit stressed out about not finding any "US-Visit" exit scan machines inside the terminal. According to the immigration and visa video they showed on the flight over it was mandatory to scan your passport before you exit the US. Information inside the terminal knew nothing about any terminals, so I checked out the homepage for tsa.gov on an internet terminal. Turns out they've stopped requiring that since may last year. I was fairly pissed at KLM for giving me outdated information on the flight.
Having never been to the US before, some things were strange to me. The way they organize their road signs is puzzling. They use lots of text on their signs, sometimes with some advertisement signs on top for good measure. I'm used to symbols instead of text on signs, and no superfluous signs.
Shopping was VERY different from Holland - customer service was good, they had a good selection of stuff for sale and the stores were not overcrowded. With the dollar to euro rate right now it was fairly cheap as well...
Overall, my first visit to the US was less hassle than I anticipated. I had a good weekend. It was nice to see Diana again, and Washington D.C. was a nice city.
Pictures are here
