I didn't update the map because my phone was dead when we got off the bus, then when I got it back and my phone was finally alive, I was at my house and I didn't really feel like sharing where I live with the whole world.
Aaand yeah... then I kept forgetting...
Anywho, here is my official report on our trip to DC with pictures from my phone, our family camera, and my Mom's iPhone.
First of all, you should know who went on the trip with me.
There are my twin sisters, Emma, and Rachel.
Then their buddies Rita and Gina. Our third cousins.
Emily and Joe who are siblings.
Then my best man buddy John.
Friday.
We arrive at the bus at 6:30 pm and get all situated and hunkered down for the estimated 12 hour drive down to DC!
Emma sat next to Rita,
Rachel sat next to Gina,
Joe sat next to John,
And I sat next to Emily.
We start driving, and they turn on Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader. As soon as they turn it on, we notice that there are terrible green lines going across our TV screen. "Oh great" we think. Then the sound konked out. Wonderful.
After a while the sound came back on, and then went off, and came on... then went off.. And kept doing this the whole time we tried to watch any movie.
Ok, so, watching a movie on this bus is a pain.
Later, word spreads that the bathroom in the back of the bus is not working. Oooh great.
The whole bus ride, there was a big snow storm slowing down our progress. That snow storm turned the 12 hour bus ride, that was actually going to be more like 14... to 18 hours long.
The bus ride wasn't too bad.
Yeah, your knees are touching the seat in front of you, and the movie that's on is a total chick flick. But I enjoyed sitting around with all of my friends.
First we messed around with my iPod Touch until it died... Then, we moved on to my phone and watched some Monk... until my phone died. So, we had to go switch to my DS.
During all this, it got REALLY hot inside the bus. Like... REALLY hot. It was so hot, I was like.. Holy cow, I had better drink some water or something so I don't overheat.
Later, the bus driver confessed that it got to over 90 degrees inside the bus.
Apparently, the automatic air system was freaking out and wouldn't shut off by its self. So what our bus driver had to do was manually shut it on and off when he felt it was too hot or too cold in the bus.
After a while, it was time to go to sleep.
So me and Joe switched spots and I slept next to John.. Or, tried to. Its kind of hard to sleep when your knees are touching the seat in front of you, and you cant put your head anywhere. Oh yeah, and at this point, the bus was REALLY cold because the air system had been off for a while. So everybody got all bundled up and tried to sleep.
In the end, I got about 4 hours of sleep. On a bus, apparently, you can only sleep for one hour at a time. After the sun rose, trying to sleep was pointless so I moved back by Emily and we tried to solve some more Professor Layton mysteries on the DS.
We didn't get to the hotel until about 11:00 AM.
"We have arrived at our "Quality" Inn hotel... And this place is a dump. It's really small, everything is dirty, and old. We have strolled around and sprayed everything with Lysol before setting our bags down. "Make sure to close your bags," my mom says, "rats might get into them... Seriously.. " Squeamishly walking around, picking things up with tissues, we have checked our beds for bedbugs,(it's safe) the bathroom has been thoroughly sprayed down, and the shower head has something that looks like blood on it... Maybe somebody was beaten down in this place...
This... Is a nice sink in this bathroom/kitchen... No towel for drying your hands?.... Oookayyyy. I will just shake my hands off.
No rats spotted yet.
After we got situated we left our hotel and walked down to the train station about a mile away.
To get there, we had to walk through the worst area you could possibly imagine. Industrial, mafia, territory. Seriously.
I don't know how my Mom took these photos without getting her phone snatched away. Or getting murdered or something.
Anywho, we walk through the HOOD without looking at anybody in the eyes and arrive at the train station where we get our train tickets that for whatever reason have pandas on them...
For most of us, this is our first time being on a train. By the end of this trip, we where train riding experts.
I walked over to the ticket stand where you slide your ticket to get out and felt around in my pocket for my ticket.... it wasn't there... AHH!
After I was sure I didn't have it, I told my mom and she was like, oooh boy.
We told the ticket Lady and she was like: OOOH BOY. I'm going to lecture you!... BOAH!
She came out of her little stand, and leaned up against all the ticket machines and said.. "I'm going to lecture you in front of ALL THESE FEMALES."
"SO, Your the TALLEST ONE HERE... and YOU lost your ticket?... I'm going to lecture you.. and I'm going to take my TIME with it. So, YOUR the one who LOST YOUR TICKET? How did you loose your ticket? You know, you need to take care of your Momma. I'm going to let you go, and not make you buy another ticket. You know, your HANDSOME! Just walk through this gate over here... TAKE CARE OF YOUR MAMA! BYE HANDSOME MAN!"
Through all this I was just like... UH eheh uhm ehh, Oh! Thanks! Thank you! ehh Thanks again!
And we all walked away giggling.
After the train ticket incident, we walked to the Capitol. where we got our private tour.
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| Under the big dome in the middle of the capital. |
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| The dome was SUPER tall. |
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| At the top was this painting. And supposedly, this painting of George Washington is 10 feet shoulder to shoulder. |
After our private tour, we walked down and got some food in a super expensive restaurant.
That was our first real meal in over 24 hours. We ate some pretty good sandwiches.
After the meal was done, I guessed the exact cost of the food for all of us, down to the penny, without cheating.
After we ate we walked down to the fancy expensive downtown Washington DC hotel and waited for our bus to pick us up for a nice tour around the city.
At each point of interest, the bus would let us out for 15 minuets so we could get close and check out all the monuments and stuff.
On the way back from one, I decided to hop like a lemur, and spin around at the same time... Bad idea. Somebody accidentaly stepped on my shoe, so I went spinning/flying out of my shoe onto the concrete. As I fell I saw our family camera skip across the concrete into a bush. My Mom saw it and thought: Ooh, is he going to get up from that?
Yep! I was fine. Well, kinda. I was more worried about the camera than myself. I got pulled up by a couple people and they are all: ALL YOU ALRIGHT?
Yeah, yeah, I'm fine.. DID YOU SEE THE CAMERA? Awww my guts where churning when I saw that sucka skip across the concrete...
In the end, it turns out that the battery door kinda cracked a little bit so you need to hold the camera kinda weird to turn it on. But it still works 100% other then that!
On the walk back to the bus, I had to limp, and my toe was a tiny bit bloody.
Other than that I was FIIINE.
That little bit of blood on my toe must have put me into a really dumb manly mode. John and I decided it was a good idea to see who could take more slapping to the back of the hand. We tied. At another stop, I limped over with my hand all red and slapped a piece of ice that was hanging over an edge and hurt my finger. When I got back to the bus it turned out that the ice somehow cut my finger.
After a super cold exhausting day of walking around ALL DAY and hardly eating, we finally got to go back to our nasty hotel rooms.
For dinner, we had our cheap, grease SATURATED soggy burgers and fries.
We hit the sack and woke up early the next morning. We got ready and left for the Smithsonian!
We had to walk through the HOOD again to get to the train station. The train took us to the Smithsonian where we walked around the Washington monument and got pictures with the White House in the background.
After that, we walked to the Museum of American History. On the way there my hands started turning purple so I had to stick them in my coat.
When we arrived we were already super hungry and tired. We looked around in the museums for a while.
After exploring the museum we were STARVING. So we went down to the cafeterias and got our $12 sandwiches and $2 bananas and started coming back to life.
After that we walked to the Basilica for Mass. We got there 2 hours early.
LOOK HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE THERE ALREADY.
We had to sit on the FLOOR! For ALL OF MASS!
Mass took 3 HOURS! Mass normaly takes about an hour. But this one was INSANE! It took them an hour JUST TO WALK IN! There were so many priests.. it was NUTS!
After Mass, we got to look around the church.
For some reason, I only took a picture of this intense organ.
After we got back to the hotel we relaxed for a while with gummy bears. in the boys room, we literally talked about Quantum physics and the space time continuum. Also event horizons and magnetic fields.
Let's just say after that... we got kinda giddy.
After we were done we went to sleep.
We woke up next morning and walked through the HOOD again, to the train station to the Smithsonian mall green area. This is the day we MARCHED FOR LIFE!
We got there an hour early, so we got nice front row places to.... stand...
We were standing there for an hour, then listening to people talk for another hour in the freezing rain and wind. That was not fun. The weather man said 50F, but trust me, it must have been 30 or 20F.
FINALLY the march began. We all could hardly move our legs, but we shuffled over to the road and marched for 2 hours to the Supreme Court building with over 500,000 other people.
We owned the city that day. Every trash can within a 10 mile radius was filled with picket signs. Every train, every bus, was PACKED. Every food place, line. Every bathroom, line. everything. There were people everywhere. The population of Washington, DC is 600,000. We had 500,000 people marching.
After all that, we walked back to the train station. And walked to our hotel through the HOOD.
We got to our room, shoved some food in our faces, got on the bus and FINALLY got to sit down after 6 hours of standing up in the cold. No sitting at all.
Finally, we went home.
The bus ride back took about 14 hours and was pretty uneventful.
We got home at about 9 am.
I'm glad we could go, and I'm hoping I can go again next year!
