Our Washington weekend!

Monday April 10th 2017

Warning, very, very long story!!
(just saw that not all of it was here, so I put it up again!)

Last Friday the alarm went off at 7am again and Caroline was out the door around 8am. When she went down to leave, I went with her down to the basement where the washer and dryer are. I had already asked Amy to show me how they work, it’s not like I haven’t done laundry here before, but all machines are different and it is best to ask, before something goes wrong!

We took off the bedsheets, so I washed those as well. It takes about 25 minutes for the washer and about 50 minutes for the dryer to be done, so I’ll be able to do all of the laundry before we leave for Washington DC this afternoon!

While the washer and dryer are doing their thing, I was up in the room typing and cleaning up some stuff and packing things to take with me for our trip.

Caroline had already taken her stuff to work with her. She can leave her laptop in her desk over the weekend, which is really nice, because it is pretty heavy!

Around 11:30am I was ready and about to leave the house, when I realized it was raining!! So I had to bring an umbrella, which is always a pain when you already have a hand full with another bag!! I had time enough to stop by the AT&T store to check on some things, but the guy that I talked to also didn’t know how to get the simcard to work. Still don’t understand, but I was going away for the weekend, so I just left it for another day. It still kind of strange though that it won’t work here in the US, if I would have been in some-place-with-no-name I wouldn’t have been surprised if it didn’t work. But ok, we’ll find a solution next week!

At the Penn Bookstore I went to the bathroom and sat for a while for Caroline to be done at work. I texted her so we could walk to the bus stop together. We got there nice and early, which on one hand was good, meant we would have good seats, but the driver didn’t start loading people up until about 15 minutes before we were supposed to leave, which meant we had to wait in the wind and rain all that time!!!

Anyway, we got on the bus and had really nice seats. Getting out of Philly on a Friday afternoon wasn’t all that easy, for some reason it took us forever to get to the highway.
But once we were on our way, we got sleepy and our eyes closed on their own account!! I can never sleep on a bus or a plane, but sometimes my eyes just get heavy and just close!!

There was only one other stop before Washington, in Baltimore, but it was really in the middle of nowhere. In a mall area, way outside of the city itself, strange place to have a bus stop.

We were supposed to be in Washington about 4:30pm, but for some reason we didn’t get there until an hour later. Still don’t know what happened, we did have some delay in Philly, but we didn’t think that took that long.
But everything was good, we were there, all we had to do now was find the bus stop to get us to our hotel. We had no clue as to where that was, so we asked someone and he also gave us some maps of the city.
Of course with his directions we still managed to go in the wrong direction, but we remedied that mistake pretty quickly!

Did I tell you about the weather in Washington yet????
Let me tell you now, it was COLD!!!! It was F..ing freezing!!!! Unbelievable, it was already cold in Philly, so we were dressed for it, but here the wind was really ice cold….especially after we had ended up waiting for 45 minutes for our bus!!!
That was unbelievable too!! We figured there would be several buses, since it was Friday night, everyone was going home from work. But there was a schedule and a sign that told us which bus was coming when, but none of them were correct! We needed the number 80 bus to Kennedy Center and we had seen at least 3 number 80 buses go by, but they were all in the opposite direction. And the ones that did pass us by, were not going all the way to where we had to go!!

But eventually we were on a bus and we managed to find our hotel, pretty quickly too!!
We were staying at the hotel Lombardy, on Pennsylvania avenue. Really nice, classy hotel!!! Of course I had to see it to believe, because sometimes the pictures on internet look better than the real deal (like I had the first time I was in Washington with my friend Marjo!!).
But this was really cool! We were on the 10th floor, we had to look for our room though, because we couldn’t read the receptionists handwriting! It could either be a 2 or a 7, which turned out to be a 2, because the key didn’t work at nr 7 and there were already people in there.

Every room door had a French lattice work door in front of it, really nice. The room itself had a little hall way, there was a kingsize bed with 6 pillows on it, there was a very nice bathroom and we even had a small kitchen with a small table and 2 chairs.
We took some pictures, dumped our stuff and went out to find something to eat. Caroline had seen a TGI Friday’s on her map, which we found easily, but it was soo busy that there were already people waiting to be seated. We were tired and hungry, didn’t feel like waiting, so we had some really nice Mexican food with rice, vegetables and chicken.

We were back in the room around 8:30pm, turned on the tv, but we didn’t really watch anything. Too tired, lights were out at 10pm.

We didn’t set the alarm for Saturday morning, we just wanted to take it easy. But we were up early anyway!
I had to put in my earplugs last night, because there were planes going over the hotel and above us someone was walking around, but it sounded like there were rats between the floorboards!!

We were awake around 8am, but didn’t get up until 9am, we just liked the bed soo much!!
We took our time taking a shower and getting dressed. We liked the shower, it had a big shower head, which got everything wet. There was a window right next to the bathtub, if we were able to open that, people on the streets downstairs would have gotten wet. We didn’t try it, but it would have been nice!

Around 10:30am we went out to find some breakfast. There was supposed to be a Pret a Manger in the area, a place Caroline and I know from London. But unfortunately there was construction work going on there, so we had to look for something else, but there were plenty of places….only thing was that they were all full! At one place the wait to get a table was one hour and 45 minutes!!! No way! We went to a place called Paul, which was across the street, a French style bakery, very nice. Here we found a place to sit down and we had some nice things to eat. We just sat there for a while, eating and chatting away about everything and nothing as we say!

When we were done, it was time to check out Washington and we wanted to go to the city center. For some reason we started out in the opposite direction, not sure why, must be something wrong with my sense of direction!
But we managed to find our way and stumbled upon the White House. I think we were walking along behind it, while the Oval Office is in the front or is that the back yard?
Weren’t sure, but the side with the Oval Office looks more impressive to be honest.
There were 2 fences around the White House now, with lots of guys from the Secret Service.

We walked down to Fords Theater, the theater where Abraham Lincoln was shot. We did find it, but unfortunately we couldn’t go inside. It’s still in use as a theater today and that afternoon there would be a performance, so we couldn’t go in.
We could go to the Petersen House across the street, but there was a huge line there and we didn’t feel like waiting to get in. Maybe some other time.

Then we thought it was time for lunch and from what I remember from the last time I was here, the Old Post Office has a food court, so that’s where we went. Again, my sense of direction played tricks on me or the signs were off, because we got there walking around in a circle!! But we couldn’t go in, because now it is a Trump International Hotel and there were fences/gates in front of every entrance!!! I think he bought the place and turned it into a hotel, but I still have to find out about that online though.
Behind the hotel was a Starbucks, where there were no fences/gates, so we went there to have some lunch.

It was very hot in there, super busy and the service was really slow!!! It took forever for the guy to find out that they were out of sandwich Caroline wanted, then the banana bread and lemon cake had to be taken out of a plastic wrapper and put into a paper bag, he didn’t touch anything with his hands, used some kitchen tool to put it all in the bags. And making tea can be a problem too, if you have to take out the teabags with those tools as well!! Man, it was amazingly slow!!!

Caroline managed to get us a table and eventually we did have something to drink and eat.
We walked on toward the National Mall, which is a strip between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument, along which are most of the Smithsonian museums.
The weather was nice, with a little cold wind every now and then, but we didn’t feel like going into a museum.

So we decided to look at all of the monuments and memorials. There are memorials and monuments for most of the presidents and wars that the US have participated in in this city. Some are huge and others are small, we still don’t know why that is exactly. But they are all impressive!

From the Washington Memorial we walked over to the Vietnam War memorial. And from there to the Lincoln and Korean War memorial. It was super busy at the Lincoln memorial!!! We just walked up, took some pictures and walked back out again. In front of this is the Reflection Pool, where I thought it would be a nice idea to have our picture taken, but there would have been too many other people in the picture, to actually make it a nice one, so we didn’t do it.

From the Korean War memorial we walked over to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial and on the way we saw the Martin Luther King memorial. Didn’t remember seeing this the last time I was here, not sure if it was there already or if we just passed by it without knowing it was there, but it looked pretty new. And it was also very nicely done.

We also came to Washington at this time of year because of the Cherry Blossom festival. Washington got about 1000 cherry blossom trees from Japan in 1910 and every year when they bloom it is a very pretty sight.
But someone already told us that there were not that many blossoming trees this year and a late snowstorm had gotten rid of most of the blossoms also…so we didn’t get to see that many, but what we did see was really beautiful and it kind of gave us an idea of what it must have looked like in full bloom.
Actually while we were walking toward the Vietnam War memorial, a small cherry blossom flower landed at our feet, which is now drying in my traveljournal! So we did get something!!

From the Martin Luther King memorial we walked along the Tidal Basin to the FDR memorial. We actually walked along water, without there being a fence to keep us from falling in!!
The FDR memorial is a pretty big one, but this president has served at least 3 or 4 terms and he helped this country through some pretty tough times like the depression and WWII.
From here we could keep walking along the waterfront toward the Jefferson memorial, also a pretty impressive one!

Then we thought we had had enough for today, so we finished the walk along the water and walked passed the WWII memorial toward the hotel.
At every memorial there is a small sign that says “Respect your national monument/memorial” which I think they did, because it would make people aware of the fact that their tax money has helped build it, so respect what is yours. But unfortunately there were people who either didn’t know how to read or just don’t respect anything, but they rode their bikes through this memorial!! Unbelievable!!!

Anyway we managed to find our way back to the hotel, we had wanted to get something to eat along the way, but there wasn’t really anything there. So we tried again at TGI Friday’s, where a huge group of teenagers left as we walked in. Thinking we would at least get a table, we waited for someone to notice that we wanted to eat there, but no one did, so we left. I hate it when that happens!!

Instead we went to an Italian restaurant, Bertucci’s. Where they had a sign saying that the restaurant would be closed, because they also had a big group of teenagers there, but upon checking at the bar, we could eat something there. Which was good, because we were really tired and didn’t feel like walking any further.

So we sat there at the bar and it took a while to get a menu and something to drink. The manager had been called up for some people at another table and he was the one who noticed that we didn’t have a menu or anything to drink yet and gave it to us.
Then one of the waiters took our order, which Caroline had to repeat, because he didn’t take any notes.

Then it took forever for the food to arrive. First came my order, but I didn’t have any cutlery to eat it with, so I had to wait for that too. I asked another waiter to give me something to cover it so it wouldn’t get cold. The couple next to Caroline had asked for the cheque at least 15 minutes before they got it and then she had to ask to get her credit card back. The couple next to me had to wait for a box to take their pizza with them for at least 20 minutes and then it took another 10 minutes for them to get their cheque…I told them to just walk away, they probably wouldn’t even notice!!

When we finally got the cutlery, Caroline’s pizza still wasn’t done. So we started to eat my food, so as not to let it get too cold and Caroline was hungry as well. Then her pizza finally came, but not the salads that came with our order…..

I got sooo fed up with this, that we decided to just cancel the salads, get a box for the pizza and leave!
But of course the manager had to take off the salads from our cheque, while the waiter was waiting for him, our salads did come, but he would still have them taken off. Good, because we only had a couple of bites anyway.
Then the manager finally came and asked us about something being wrong with the soup….after the waiter had already explained to him what the deal was!
I told him that everything got up late and we just wanted to leave, so they took off the salads, gave us an extra discount and we noticed that our drinks weren’t on it!!! Not that we told them and I have to admit we didn’t leave the best of tips, but I was sooo done with this restaurant!!!

I totally understand that things can be hectic when there is a large group of people, I have worked in restaurants also. But then you either make sure you have enough staff to pull this off or you just close the bar for dinner. But they probably thought they would lose a lot of money if they did that, but this couldn’t have been profitable either!! The 2 waiter that were working the bar were either there for the first time or had never been in a busy situation before!! They guys took no notes while taking orders and when orders came up, they didn’t know for which table that was, I think they also screwed up cheques!!
I swear I have heard them say sorry so many times, that if I would have gotten 10 cents each time they said that, we would have gotten our meal for free!!!

So no, I was not a happy camper!!! And trust me this is soo unlike me it even surprised myself. Usually I would sit there and wait an just leave it at that, but this time I was tired and just fed up!!

We went back to the hotel to make some tea, I had brought my water cooker, but it didn’t work. I had tried 2 different plugs and nothing happened, so I thought something was wrong with the cooker. Thinking I had to check before bringing it with me!
But then I wanted to charge my camera and my phone at the same plugs and that didn’t work either! So something must have been wrong with the plugs.

So no tea, but that was ok, we were too tired really.
Lights were out at 10pm again!!
Again we didn’t set the alarm and Sunday we woke up around 9am. Caroline got dressed first, so she could talk to Eddie while I got dressed. Around 10:30am we checked out of the hotel and we went to Paul again to have breakfast. Figuring that it would be busier on Sunday’s, we had a strategy, we looked for a table first and went to get something to eat one at a time. We had the same table as yesterday and we just sat, had our breakfast and a great discussion again today! We took our time again, we didn’t have to be at the train station until 6pm.

We looked at things to do and ended up going to the Renwick Gallery. I had read about it, they had paintings by Singer Sargent, Cassat and Hopper, some of my favorite artists….but either they had them and not anymore or I had read it wrong, because all they had was modern art, most of which we didn’t understand at all! We had to have our bags checked and we could leave them downstairs in the basement, but there were no lockers. It was ok, we didn’t stay long anyway. After this we went to the National Mall, where we visited the Museum of American History. Where they also checked all of our bags and we had to go through a metal detector too. Of course it is understandable why they do this, it’s very busy, if someone wanted to do something this would be a good place to do it. But it was just a big hassle because we had so many bags to carry!! The good thing is that they had lockers!! So we stuffed our bags in and went into the museum.
We started on the 3rd floor, where they have an exhibition about how the US started and all of the war they have participated in. Did get a bit sad at the end though.

There was also an exhibition on all of the First Ladies, some of their dresses and crockery (sp?), some of the patterns they ordered for their husbands terms in office.
Some of the presidents didn’t have a wife that would do the First Lady duties, they could appoint a daughter, daughter-in-law or friend to do it, which I didn’t know, so learned something new again!

Then we went down to the Stars & Stripes café to have a very nice hamburger. After lunch we walked around on the 2nd floor, where they told the story of the US in different objects and music, something like Benjamin Franklin’s walking stick, the first computer and Bert and Ernie of Sesame street. It was very nice, but we were already tired, so just kind of walked through it.

Around 4pm we left the museum to walk over to the train station. Since it was still very warm outside and we had to carry all of our stuff, we took our time in getting there!
We made it, we were there at 5pm, got something to eat for on the bus and went to the restroom there. I never like to use the restroom on a train or a bus, if I do use them it is because I absolutely have to go. But this restroom we used at the train station was really almost as bad as on the bus!!

Anyway we were standing in line for the bus at 5:30pm already, bus wasn’t supposed to leave until 6pm, but this way we could get a good seat on the bus. This time it was a coach and we had a great seat! We left on time, only had one stop in Baltimore and we did have a bit of traffic, but still managed to be back in Philadelphia 5 minutes ahead of schedule!!

I had already checked the schedule of the Blue line this morning and it was good to notice that the train was going on time!! We were back at the house around 9:30pm, we put all of the laundry in the closet and put the sheets back on the bed. It was funny because we didn’t know which sheet had to go on which mattrass!!
But we managed to do it, we had some yoghurt and some tea and around 10:30pm it was lights out for us!!

We had a great time in Washington DC, we actually liked it better then Philadelphia, definitely wished we could have taken the bed with us!!

Love
Linda and Caroline