Real Life
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I went to
Washington DC and New York in March 2007, kept a
diary
and took lots of photos. Here is my diary with a selection of photos -
the page might take a while to load. Click on any of the photos for a
bigger one.
All of my America photos, including the ones
here,
can
be found at flickr
Wednesday
7th March
Long flight to America.
It's annoying it takes so long to get there. We
flew over Canada, which was all white. Sadly, the white didn't go when
we reached America and it was -2C and snowing in Washington DC. The
taxi ride to the hostel was mostly boring. The highway had no scenery
apart from trees and other cars. Once we got into the city you only
drive a short way and then you hit another set of traffic lights. But
we did go on a road parallel to the White House and I got a glimpse of
it.
Got to the hostel and found it's actually a four-bed room, even though
when you book it says ten-bed. The strangest thing is it's mixed sex,
even though it definitely said single sex. And the room is absolutely
freezing.
We went out to look for some dinner and keep me awake and accidentally
found the Treasury, which looks like the White house. It might have
been that I saw earlier. We also found Borders, and a map with
restaurants, shops, and notes about places of interest on. |
Thursday
8th March
I woke up at 5.30am, which was
slightly better than I thought I was
going to wake up, especially since I woke up at 3.30 and thought I
might not get back to sleep. We headed out, in the cold, in search of
the White House. We couldn't see it or the White House Visitors Centre,
but ended up at the Washington Memorial, which it turns out you can go
up in. The lift makes your ears go funny and the height (50ft) makes
your head feel weird. The views were good though, and there were signs
showing the same view in different years, so you could see how much it
had changed.
So we went out in search of lunch and accidentally found the DC
Visitors Centre, where they had some really useful leaflets.
After that we did manage to find the White House Visitors Centre, which
wasn't entirely worth going to. We also managed to find the view of the
White House you see on TV.
We kept having to get our bags x-rayed and ourselves metal-detected,
including both the White House Visitors Centre and the DC Visitors
Centre! We made a quick trip to the White House gift shop, which didn't
really have anything worth buying. Then we were really knackered, so
went back to the hostel to sleep/lie down for a bit, before going to
the supermarket, which was a really interesting place. We decided to
have Chinese take-away for dunner, and the rice came in a cardboard box
that you see on The West Wing. It was a bit like Northern take-away, as
the rice came with it anyway. You also had an option of small or large
- the small being smaller than a normal take-away, but still too much
for one meal. |
Washington Monument
View of White House from Washington Monument
The White House
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Friday
9th March
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View of the Mall and Washington Monument
The Capitol
Lincoln Memorial
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We ached from walking, so got a bus
to Union Station (for $1) and wondered round there for a bit, and
booked ourselves on the Monuments by Moonlight tour. We then went to
the Capitol. We discovered after we'd got tickets that you can't take
any food in, and they won't even keep it for you. So Melli went in and
I went to the Library of Congress - who had a free cloakroom!
I went on that tour and learnt all sorts of things about that building
and the Capitol. The guide pointed out where the Senate and
Representatives sat - and those wings weren't built originally, they
came later. The inside of the building was really pretty and included
representations of pretty much everything they could think of.
Then I went back to the Capitol and got on the last tour of the day.
You only actually go in three rooms, after queueing for ages. There's
the Rotunda, which was pretty. The original meeting place of Congress,
which has weird acoustics so you can hear people perfectly across the
room. Now it has bronze and marble statues of famous dead people from
each state. There was a room downstairs which just has cases of
information about the building of the Captiol. After that we were too
late to go to the Supreme Court, but had time for dinner before the
tour, which was really expensive - everything else being free up to
that point.
It turned out to be worth it, though, because the guide told us so much
about the city and the history of America. We saw the city lit up, and
had stops too, so we saw the FDR memorial, the World War II thing with
Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima, the Lincoln memorial and the
Vietnam memorial. The driver seemed to think World War II lasted three
years though, which is a bit disturbing.
I also saw three minis today. Two were new minis, one was a purple old
one and it was right-hand drive too. |
Saturday
10th March
It felt a bit warmer this morning,
although not so sunny. We caught the cheap bus to the International Spy
Museum. It was a bit badly organised because they sent you up in lifts
and then waited for about three lift-loads before making you watch a
film. Then you got into the museum and therefore couldn't read any of
the stuff because there were so many people in one place. The museum
itself was quite interesting, although doesn't really tell you anything
you didn't already know from watching spy stuff on TV and in films. The
shop was good, though.
When we came out of the Spy Museum we found it had got really warm -
only really needed a t-shirt! And I managed to get my face sunburnt.
We went to see the back of the White House and take photos and go to
the Oval Room for lunch, which the guidebook says is frequented by
White House people because its so near. Unfortunately, though, it was
closed and there was no hint of opening times on the door.
We then tried the Visitors Centre food court as we were really hungry,
and after we'd gone through the metal detector and x-ray we discovered
there was a wine festival on, so we couldn't go down to the food court.
And the Visitors Centre itself was closed. But next door was an Italian
restaurant, which turned out to be really nice, and I had hazlenut ice
cream for dessert. We debated what to do next, as there were a few
things we liked the sound of, but by the time we finished there wasn't
enough time to do any of them.
So instead we did Borders and a souvenir shop. The DVDs had price on
them that were the same numbers as at home - so about half the price.
The books were cheap too - about $7.50 for a book that would be
£6.
It's a bit hard to tell what the prices of things actually are, though,
because they add the tax on later, which makes it really confusing. The
local accent is beginning to grate, hopefully the New York one will be
different enough that it won't really annoy me for a few days. I can't
stand people telling you to have a nice day, that's really annoying.
I hear a lot of sirens for such a small city. The crossings are weird
because there's an off-white hand instead of a red man and a white man
instead of a green man. There's also a countdown to tell you how long
you have to cross. However, they only stop the traffic in one
direction, so they can still turn right while you're crossing.
I finally understand what a block is now - although it could only
really be applied to grid cities. The grid is really small here, so the
blocks are small. Why they need so many roads parallel to each other, I
don't know. The diagonal avenues named after states confuse, but the
grid is labelled alphabetically in one direction and in number order in
the other, which makes finding things relatively easy - as long as you
know which direction you're going in. |
The Treasury
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Back of the White House
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Sunday
11th March
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View from Empire State Building
View from Empire State Building
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Getting up early wasn't that hard
given the number of sirens there were about. Which were then followed
by church bells. The trains were a bit strange because they had gates,
but apart from that it was all normal. Well, apart from the shoe
shiners in Union Station. The train was quite cold and confused me,
since I was going to Penn Station and it stopped at New Jersey Penn
Station and New York Pennsylvania Station. Didn't really get to see
much in the way of scenery either.
Eventually managed to meet up with Hilary, after I thought I had locked
myself in the toilet. Once we were out in New York I immediately
disliked it in comparison to Washington - the buildings are so high you
can't see anything, although all there is to see is buildings anyway.
There are so many people too that you can't really stop and look at
anything. It's worse than Oxford Street on a Saturday in December.
We went to the Empire State building, where you queue to have your bags
x-rayed, queue to buy tickets, queue to go up to the 80th floor, the
queue to go up to the 86th. The views are quite good, even if they are
of mostly buildings, but there was a cold wind outside. Then we queued
to go down to the 80th floor and queued again to get back to the ground
again. There was more time spent queueing than there was looking at the
view.
After that we headed home - after discovering the people in the car
park parked the cars! It took ages to get out of New York as well, as
it was very busy. Then we went to the supermarket which had loads of
different types of matzo - including egg matzo, worryingly, but none
that were wheat free.
The block of flats Hilary lives in is really weird - the corridors look
like a hotel, there's a tiny swimming pool, a room with a table tennis
table and pool table, and a sitting room type thing.
The rabbit is small and very light grey/dark white sort of colour. And
with small ears. |
Monday
12th March
Bit of a lazy day. We went to
Connecticut to some second hand bookshops. It was a bit annoying
because they were all $1 - until you come to pay when you discover
they're actually $1 + a bit because of sales taz, which is driving me
mad - it's impossible to work out in advance how much money to get out.
In the evening we watched some DVDs. I saw the first episode of
Veronica Mars, which was alright but I don't really feel the need to
see any more. I also saw the first episode of Wonderfalls, which I
quite enjoyed, and I'll probably add it to my amazon list. |
Cat
Rabbit
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Tuesday
13th March
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Statue of Liberty from the back
Statue of Liberty from the front
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We went into New York on the train -
the machine gave me dollar coins! And there were bins at the station.
We arrived at Grand Central Station, which is quite grand. It looks
like it has 117 platforms, since that was the higest number platform,
but it's actually because some of them are on a different level. It
still has a lot of platforms though.
Going over to the Statue of Liberty was more hassle than I thought it
would. First because the woman I paid wouldn't accept 1 cent coins,
after I'd carefully counted out my change, then she couldn't cope with
me giving her $21.50 for something that cost $11.50.
Then we joined a long queue, at the end of which was yet another x-ray
and metal detector. But we finally got on the boat and got lots of
photos of the Statue of Liberty. We wandered around the island a bit -
and I discovered that the statue is made of copper, which I never knew.
And we did the two gift shops.
Back on the mainland we did The Strand bookshop - who made you give
them your bags. And Forbidden Planet, who were tiny and had
next-to-nothing in - certainly in comparison to the Friar Street
Bookshop.
We still had time, so did the gift shops in Times Square, of which
there were many. After that was Spamalot, which was very funny.
Although since it was mostly The Holy Grail sort of - it was a bit
incongruous to have Always Look on the Bright Side of Life in there. I
did like the slightly panto aspect of there having to be a wedding at
the end. And Sir Lancelot turning out to be gay was funny too. |
Wednesday 14th March
| Today all we
really did was go
looking for Oat matzos. We found them, but they were produced in
Golders Green! Despite me being told last year they come from America.
So I decided there was no point spending money just to send them back
to England. We also went to Walmart, who had Asda roll back signs and
George clothing. But basically they sold everything apart from fresh
food. |
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