The Nations Capital = Hurricanes and no bloody parking

Washington was only about an hour away from Baltimore, after a short drive we arrived right in the hub of everything. There were loads of huge grand buildings, parks and monuments. We arrived around 10am, perfect time as the museums were just opening. However we were just about to find out that parking was impossible. We drove around for about an hour, not able to find any available parking anywhere it was driving us crazy. At the end we decided that our only option was to drive further out and catch the train back in. Finally we found a parkade near the subway in a place called ‘Friendship Village’. After all this it was lunch time by the time we made it back to downtown Washington.

We walked around the monuments first; Whitehouse, that was a lot smaller then we thought but still pretty cool. Then we made our way to the reflection pool and Lincoln memorial, unfortunately the reflection pool was all fenced off and dug up as the original pool was sinking and they needed to fix it so it really was more like the reflection poo not pool, very disappointing but nothing you can do as it’s going to take 2 years to complete. Lincoln memorial was huge and very crowded; next we made our way past the Korean War vets memorial then to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial that was probably my favourite of them all. Last was the Washington monument that was closed off because of the earthquake a couple of days ago that caused the monument to crack. We were running out of time so decided to only go to the holocaust museum today, the main exhibit was huge about 3 floors full of history and artefacts. It was very sad but we learnt a lot more about how Hitler actually got into power.

It was late afternoon so we headed back to the car stopping of at our 5^th DDD place ‘Sonic’ a ping-pong restaurant for dinner. It was awesome, the tables where ping-pong tables, the pizza was exceptional and you could even play ping-pong for free out the back. After dinner we made our way back to the car, which took us a bit to find as we went to the wrong parkade. That night we drove out to a park and ride for the night.

Day 2: Hurricane Irene was on path with Washington and the east coast of the US. It was meant to hit Saturday afternoon, high winds rain and flooding were meant to be coming so Marc and I had organised a discount hotel room for the next 2 nights to escape the storm. There was no point moving forward as the next part of the trip we were going to the coast then we would be stuck right in the middle of it.

It was raining and after the horror first day in DC we decided to just check in early to the hotel room, we were super early so had to wait for a room. We were staying in a place called Stirling just near the Dulles airport, there was a huge mall just next door to the hotel so we decided to walk around there until our room was ready.

Once our room was ready we moved in for the next 2 days. From here we did not do much just caught up on emails, the blog and skyped the family to let them know we were ok.

Day 3: During the night a lot of rain fell but the winds were more like a storm not a hurricane. It turned out that the hurricane died down before it hit NYC and was more like a tropical storm. This was really good news for everyone on the coast.

We did not do much at all on the Sunday just relaxed and enjoyed the break from the road to sightseeing.

Day 4: After 2 days in the hotel Marc and I were all refreshed and ready to get going again. Marc had always wanted to go on a cruise so he booked us to go on a 5 day cruise leaving the following Monday from Miami. However our credit card had been maxed out (later found out someone had stolen our credit card number, made a copy and was buying up big back in Ontario), so had to call back later once the credit card was working again.

After a late check out we drove back into Washington to finish seeing the Smithsonian, this time we found a park and ride station first so it was no where near as stressful. First we went to the air and space museum that we loved, as we have never really seen much space history in other museums. We got to see the different types of spacecraft and the first ever aeroplane. We also tested our reflexes and I was like a cat super fast! There was a fighter jet simulation ride there we went on, Marc drove and I was the shooter but he kept spinning us around in circles and I could not shoot anything.

Afterwards we walked up to capital hill and the US capital building. We were going to see some of the other museums but it was too late in the day and only had about an hour before they closed so we just walked past the art gallery and natural history museums, stopping to look at the sculpture exhibit in a garden and a petrified tree. The Smithsonian was incredible the size of the museums was huge and all free.
We headed back to pick up hank and left Washington DC heading to Richmond for the night before we started to head down the coast again. In Richmond we stayed at another Wal-mart, which was becoming more like home with all the car parks we had now stayed in.