East Coast Trip Part 2: Philadelphia and D.C.
The day began with a 6 am wakeup call. The view of the Delaware River from the hotel room was gorgeous. Our first stop was Independence Hall, where we also got to see the Liberty Bell. After that it was a short walk to the U.S. Not the most exciting stop, but it’s always cool to see precious copper and zinc pressed into worthless pennies.
At around 10am, we journeyed our way down to Washington D.C. Our first stop was the Twin Towers Center in Arlington, VA for lunch. This is probably the worst Cantonese style restaurant I’ve ever been to in my life. More on that later. After a horrible lunch, it was off to see the sights in D.C. Our first stop was at the White House. Because the weather was about 1000°F, I stayed in the shade of the trees a block away. It’s not like I really wanna go to Bush’s house anyway. =P The next stop was the U.S. Capitol. Again, not much to see unless you wanna wait in line to go inside and see a bunch of grumpy old lawyers make laws.
The next stop was at the Smithsonian. I was really looking forward to go to the Air and Space building, but the tour guide dropped us off at the museum of Natural History, which is about two blocks away. It was WAYY too hot to walk the 10 minutes over there, so I ended up seeing a pile of dinosaur bones and some bird crap. There was this one section where they had the Hope Diamond, which is like the world’s largest blue diamond. PEOPLE! IT’S JUST A DUMB BLUE ROCK!!!
It was now around 4 pm and the breeze has started to kick up, so it was a good time to see the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials. Wow were these places entirely opposite. There was barely anyone at the Jefferson memorial (which I think is better) and zounds of people at the Lincoln memorial. However, I think I know why there’s more people at the Lincoln memorial because it’s also close to the Korean and Vietnam war memorials and the Jefferson memorial is kinda way out in the distance. The final stop of the day was back to Arlington where I got a brilliant shot of the Iwo Jima memorial in silhouette.
Dinner was again back to that crappy Chinese restaurant in the Twin Towers center. As if the meal wasn’t already horrible enough, there was a FRIGGIN BEETLE in the plate of chow mein. *puke*. I was friggin furious and they didn’t even wanna refund the dish even though it was entirely inedible.
After a nice short half an hour bus ride, we stayed in the Marriot Springhill Suites in Gaithersburg, MD. The hotel room was a deluxe suite and had a kitchen and everything. The pen and paper I stole were pretty nice too. 😉
To Be Continued…
Posted: by Kelvin
