Washington DC

Back in NYC from our road trip across two states - DC and Virginia - and several small American towns in between. We're back a day early. Decided to give Charlottesville a miss as we have unfinished business in NYC. I mean too many places we want to go but have yet to visit.

DC Lofty Hostel. Our hostel is several blocks away from Union Station and in a predominantly black neighbourhood. It's a safe area as we're in the Capitol Hill precinct (tourist area). I fell in love with the beautiful brick houses with their tiny pockets of manicured gardens with cute ornaments like a bird bath or a gnome! Incidentally, our hostel is one of the refurbished houses so I actually got to stay in one.


Smithsonian Museums. I love summer cos the museums have extended opening hours. The main attraction in DC is the row of musuems along The Mall. I'm impressed at how nicely they did up the musuems even though admission is FREE. Since there is so many things to do, planning is crucial to avoid museum fatigue. We chose a couple of our favourite exhibits from each place and moved on. DC is rather tiring cos there's alot of walking and the museums and monuments are spaced rather far apart from one another.

National Museum of American History. I chose the Communities in a Changing Nation exhibit which documented the different societies in America and TR (predictably) wanted to see the War of Independence. The most popular exhibit was the one on First Ladies but we were not interested enough to join the queue.



National Museum of Natural History. Was looking forward to this cos they filmed Night at the Museum 2 here haha. The re-creation of mammals, dinosaurs, whales etc is amazing. I can almost imagine them coming to life at night!



And then it rained.