Liam Bowers A travel blog with no style.. but I don't care.

I had an early start to get to my flight. When sorting out normal holiday travel arrangements to get you to the airport in good time, making sure you get the right connections and have the travel arrangements sorted at the other side are a bit of a pain in the bum. It’s not really any different here apart from having very little time to sort any of it out. Not to put to finer a point on it, but I wing it and hope for the best.

If I’m running late, then… I’m running late. There’s nothing I can do about it. Chances are I have about 25kg’s cutting in to my shoulders so running isn’t exactly an option. So far its worked out ok.

The flight was fairly normal apart from grabbing what seemed to be a normal packet of crisps when given the option. ‘Made from blue potatoes’ it claimed on the packet. I picked one out and just stared at it for a while. It was pretty much purple. Crisps shouldn’t be purple. Ever. Humanity is not ready for this kinda stuff.

Who really shot JFK – maybe.

Do UFO’s really exist? – maybe.

Purple crisps – no chance.

For the record they didn’t really taste any different but I didn’t feel like a natural experience!

I got off the flight and grabbed my baggage but noticed my straps were undone. I had a quick look though and found a ‘Your bag has been searched for the good of the world’ leaflet. I wouldn’t have minded too much if they hadn’t broken on of the zips and pulled the pristine and unread Yankee’s vs Red Sox programme and ripped it.

I hope whichever ****’tard did that get their feet chewed off by ants in the night.

I found my way to the hostel, the sun was shining – which is becoming the norm here. I could get used to that!

An Australian called Alex arrived in my room a few minutes after so we went to explore the city for a while.

We found the river (not that it was lost) and sat down and took in the city while dangling my feet in the water. It could have been shark infested but I took the chance.

I don’t do enough of that. I wander round these cities and I do enjoy it but I don’t sit down enough and just think about it. I need to not take it for granted and realise how lucky/stupid I am to be here.

Myself, Alex, Jason (English) and Olivia (English) decided to go for a few drinks. We ran in to a problem. Every bar we went to turned us down for not having local ID. We needed to show our passports – not something that we really wanted to do. It’s not exactly easy to replace a passport after all. We did eventually find a nice local bar thankfully.

On the way back we, or maybe it was just me… decided that food was the way to go. The streets near the hostel were full of decent options and most of them were open late. I ended up with two pieces of pizza as big as my face. I can’t remember what was on them. I’m not sure I really cared. Any food at 2am after a night out is good food!

My last day in DC.

I’d kinda done everything I wanted to do in DC but my no means had I done everything there was to do.

I was tasked to hand a bit of work in for Chris. He’d pulled an all-nighter doing it so I figured I better make sure I got it in ok. The law school building was pretty nice but I’m not entirely surprised with the costs involved going to a place like this.

I went to the ‘market’. It was a supermarket rather than the traditional open air kinda market. I’ve never seen anything so amazing. It makes Sainsburys and Budgens look like Netto. The veggies were all stacked up perfectly, you could probably find a buffalo sausage (seriously) in the hundreds of products on the meat counter. The salad bad, well which one? There were 6, another just for olives! Rows of cakes, sushi and fresh pizza. It was really something. I’ve never seen anything like it. It wasn’t exactly cheap but worth it. I didn’t know where to start!

I had a feast of kings!

I hopped on a train in the direction of ‘Pentagon City’. There’s a big mall there. I didn’t last long as it was covered in kids and stupid people. Apparently it’s somewhere you might go as part of a school trip. Deep joy.

The day ended with myself, Chris and Alissa going for drinks. I’m not sure what the name of the place was but I had a pretty big list of weird and wonderful alcoholic beverages. Always a good start!

I got round to sorting out the next leg of my journey – Boston. I leave on Thursday.

Although the bus/coaches are really good here and really cheap, this is a big country. It would take me 4 1/2 hours to get back to New York, then at least an hour wait until another 4 1/2 hours until I get in to Boston. A 10 hour trip that would cost me about $35.

I opted to fly. An hour and a half flight for $120. I’m trying to do this trip cheaply but I’m not sure it makes sense to waste a day being bored to death on a coach. As comfortable as they are, it’s not going to feel it after 10 hours.

I got on the metro and headed for the city. I had no idea where I was heading for. I’ve done my touristy bits here. There’s only one thing I’d like to go to – the sister museum for the Air and Space Museum but it’s not accessible via public transport from what I’ve found. I got off at a random station which happened to be near the White House so headed there. For some reason about 20 metres of the path that went past the rear of the White House was blocked off for no apparent reason. Everyone looked a little confused – as was I. It seemed a little pointless but maybe it was to stop people getting too close to the press conference like thing going on there? I dunno. I walked round to the front of the house and didn’t realise how small it was. I kinda expected it to be massive, maybe I should blame Independence Day for that.

Today was particularly hot. It’s ‘only’ 32*c but I’m far from used to walking around in it all day. As I decided to finally head back I walked past a man that screamed “I knew I was too young to die!”. I couldn’t help but laugh. I’ve never walked past so many people and caught so many comedy statements. I should probably write them down.

I finally made it to Arlington Cemetery, this time taking 15 minutes on the metro (subway).

This place is massive and with over 300,000 people buried there there’s no wonder. As well as seeing a fair few famous people’s graves, JFK for one and probably walking past thousands more I witnessed turning out the guard and some form of military ceremony. I’m not sure what the correct term would be but it involved wreathes! It was interesting to watch, whatever it was.

I wandered over to the Lincoln Memorial (big Abe Lincoln sitting in a chair) and had a sit down to escape the sun for a little while. I got talking to a couple of girls that were also ‘seeing the sights’ of DC and walked together for a while. It was nice just to talk someone, as daft as it sounds. When I’ve been exploring a city for hours on end on your own, sometimes I’ve not said a word to anyone for over 10 – 12 hours. It doesn’t bother me too much but it’s always nice to have a change of pace now and again.

Although I didn’t have a close up look at the Whitehouse, it did appear a lot smaller than I thought it would. Not that impressive! The Washington monument (big spike) and the Capitol (where the U.S. congress does their stuff) were both very big and impressive. On my walk from the cemetery I saw a few helicopters fly right over my head. I could hear them a mile away. If you’ve ever seen the opening scene to Transformers – the eerie thud thud thud of the evil helicopter engine, well it was the same. One of them had ‘The United States of America’ on the side. Was it Marine 1? Maybe Obama flew over my head. That would have been interesting.

Today was a write off.

Too hungover to do anything useful with the day.

I did watch the Lost finale though. I won’t spoil it for anybody that still watches it and cares but it was fairly interesting. I haven’t seen it since probably the 2nd season but I’m not sure it matters. It’s almost been a national event here, very weird. It’s only a tv show people!

Today my mission was to tackle the Smithsonian Air and Science museum.

According to the site “the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum complex and research organization composed of 19 museums, 9 research centers, and the National Zoo.”

They’re all free but there’s no way you can do them all even if I did have the inclination so I thought I’d just pick the most interesting, in my case the Air and Science museum.

I got on one of the tours which covered just a small section of the museum but still took an hour and a half. That in itself was really interesting and good to know that pretty much everything there was the real thing, including the Wright Flyer and a stack of other renowned aircraft.

I finished the day by going out to Georgetown with Chris. We went to ‘the waterfront’, a bar on the river much like a holiday bar next to a pool. Fancy surroundings, it was really nice.

I’ve no idea where we ended up but it was good fun all the same.

I headed for the Spy Museum. It wasn’t free like most of the museums here but it was pretty good. Definitely a museum for boys or men who still want to be boys. It was full of gadgets and one of the James Bond DB9′s.

Myself, Chris and his girlfriend Alissa went for a meal at ‘The Cheesecake Factory’. It’s a restaurant and as the name suggests they do cheesecake…and boy, do they do cheesecake.

I’m not great when it comes down to food menus with so much choice. I’m not picky, I’m the opposite. I like practically everything so I genuinely don’t mind which I have. There were roughly 35 cheesecakes for desert as well as a plethora of other options. I’m not sure what I picked but it involved raspberry’s and white chocolate. It was massive. I like my food, I love cheesecake but I really struggled to eat it. No wonder people get big here, it’s too easy.

My first day exploring DC.

I needed to fix my main bag as I managed to snap the strap simply because of the weight. I used it as an excuse to go exploring and get my bearings a little. I found what I needed to but on my mission I came across all sorts of weird people. One of which was a Scottish woman who worked in a luggage shop that basically went on a rant about why she hates everyone here because all they care about is money. I had to find my excuses and leave.

I looked at a map and realised I wasn’t *that* far away from Arlington Cemetery and the Pentagon so I thought I’d go on a walk.

I turned out that even though it wasn’t far away, there was a 6 lane highway, military base (Fort Myer), a distinct lack of footpaths and there might as well have been dragons blocking my path.It felt like everything was trying to stop me from getting there. It took me about 3 hours. By which time the Cemetery had closed. On my adventure I did come across the airforce monument which was really impressive and really really big. The Pentagon wasn’t too interesting, just a really big building that you can’t get too close to. The Pentagon memorial was quite interesting though. It’s best described as a series of futuristic looking benches (although I very much doubt they are) with water running underneath. They’re all in rows that correspond to the birth years of the deceased ranging from 1998 to 1930. It was quite tasteful.

Today I was heading to Washington DC. It later turned out that I should have left the day after but for some reason I’d managed to mix up the days and left early (and lost out on a days accommodation) oops!

Anyhoo… I grabbed a Boltbus. They’re a cheap bus run by Greyhound and it’s pretty damn good. Big leather-esk seats, free wifi, plugs and tv. If Carlsberg made coaches… this would be it! It cost $17 for a 4 1/2 hour trip. Not too shabby! I got talking to the girl sitting next to me who essentially became my tour guide for the trip which was nice. Always good to get insider knowledge on a place and much more pleasant than sitting next to a fat smelly freaky person, which is normally the norm for me.

I arrived in DC and met up with a friend called Chris. He’s at Law school here, originally from Montana. Its been 6 years so its been really good to catch up.

We went for some food in what has to be the classic diner. Theres so much choice but went for a Philly Cheese Steak and a milkshake. Apparently you can’t get much more American than that. The cheese steak was good, not something I’ve had before and it must have been a student that came up with the thing. It’s basically a bred roll with thin bits of sliced steak covered in cheese. It’s not healthy but are you surprised!?

Today I headed for the National History Museum.

If you’ve ever seen ‘Night at the Museum’, the first one. Well its the same one.

It’s a huge place and I was in there for over 4 hours. There’s just so much to see – most of it interesting. I’m not sure how I managed to stay for so long but I could have stayed longer if I hadn’t of needed to go. I had a baseball game to get to!

The New York Yankees vs the Boston Red Sox. I’d never been to a baseball game before but while I was here I thought I’d give it a go. It was completely hammering it down and there was a definite chance of me drowning in my seat. The game was postponed an hour until the rain calmed down and it turned out my seat was under cover so all was well. The ground was very impressive. Everything was clean, tones of places to grab food, drink and anything else you might need. You didn’t have to queue for anything. That in itself was pretty amazing. The game itself was fairly dull for the most part but at the end the Red Sox came back and won 7-6. I think that unofficially made me a Red Sox fan, although I wasn’t going to mention that to the thousands of Yankee supporters in there.

I didn’t end up getting home till nearly 3am due to the stupid subway system. It should have been a 15 minute journey that took 2 1/2 hours. Not much fun.