A day in Washington DC

Thursday, October 26, 2006

After a whole day of events, and that yummilicious seafood dinner and beer, I slept sooper soundly that previous night! Woke up to have breakfast provided by wingate inn, before the bus came at 8.30am to bring us to Washington DC for a day tour!

my hair toot anot? heh heh. i dyed it dark brown cos i was sick of my black roots coming out. but i think i prefer the lighter brown look.

We reached Virginia at about 10am, and on the way we kept ourselves busy snapping photos from in the bus, as usual.

The botanical gardens or something.

taken with the powerful powerful digital rebel xt's telefocal lens or something like that.

arlington memorial bridge, over the potomac river that separates washington dc from virginia. While checking out wiki, i stumbled upon a place called Paw Paw in virginia. COOL. maybe i shld visit it some day. hee. they have a paw paw village in michigan as well. thanks US! its a nice gesture but u didn't have to go through such great lengths to welcome me!

Arlington National Cemetery

We were glad to tumble out of the bus after the 2 hour ride. Our very first stop was this Arlington National Cemetery. What a way to start the day.. At a graveyard. Well, it was no ordinary graveyard, this was a memorial for many many war veterans, other VIPs. The tour guide says that everyday, there are bodies buried here and there's not much space left so they're allocating the surrounding areas to this cemetery as well.

In case you're wondering, no i didn't take this photo. I can only take either lousy lit photos or self portraits haha. It was taken by our professional photographer puji [wah, alliteration leh] with his very professional rebel xt. i lurrrve the way it can really focus on the subject while blurring the behind. I stole lots of photos from him and I am so gonna follow him all the time on future trips so that he can take nice beautiful pictures of me. HAHA! Thanks puji in advance!!

There were loads of school children! Bus loads of them. I later learnt from lynette and another us colleague's conversation, that every school sends their students to washington dc at 8th grade [i think]. Probably a history field trip I guess.

It was actually pretty warm here. Felt kinda stupid with my scarf.

That's our tour guide. Funny they got a chinese. I later heard that they specially got a bilingual tour guide for us. Chey, he only spoke in English so I guess we wasted our money. But he was very well-versed in all the sites, street directions and gave useful informations at the different places.

Observing

i like this pict.

This is John F Kennedy's grave, buried with his wife and two of their children. I just read the article on his wife and found it rather interesting. And there's an eternal flame burning 24/7. I'm still kinda curious as to how it can burn all the time, i mean even when it snows and rains? Apparently. wikipedia says they use some gas technology thing to make sure it keeps burning. Suddenly 'eternal flame' is not just the song by bangles anymore.

The tour guide said that JFK was walking around the area one day and he commented that this was a beautiful place, and he could stay here forever. Days later he was assassinated. How morbid.

At the front (back?) of JFK's grave. See the Washington Monument in the distance?

Practising a new camera technique.. taking photos over my shoulder. hurhur.

Learn from pb one, take photo with signs.

We then left in a rush. It was a chopchop affair, rushing to the more important sites, takin as many photos as we could and rushing to the next place.

Iwo Jima War Memorial
A couple of turns brought us to the Iwo Jima War Memorial, or the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) War Memorial which depicts the 6 men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima in World War II, 3 of them who did not survive the battle. This is 'one of the few government locations in which the American flag may fly through the night'.

Next to the memorial was a 50-bell structure called the Netherlands Carillon, a Dutch gift to the United States for helping liberate that nation from the Nazis. If I sound like I really know my US history, I'm actually just happily googling and wikipediaing.

Airforce memorial. It's pretty new, and heard that they initially interfered with radio waves, and had to be shielded!

the pentagon. too bad can't take aerial shots.

U.S. Capitol

The U.S. Capitol. You know, I didn't even know this existed. And when the tour guide kept mentioning, next we will got to the US Capitol, I was wondering why he kept saying that we were going to the capital of US, i mean obviously we were in the capital of US since we were in DC.. hurhur!

In front of the carriage side of the capitol. Haha there are actually bathtubs in there! damn cool, can you imagine a spa in your office? too bad i couldn't go in and check it out. looks like a really beautiful place. There're strict maximum height laws in DC prohibiting buildings which are higher than the capitol in order to preserve its grandeur

mesky hair

Union Station

Next we went to union station. Hmm seems like the Americans aren't very creative with their station names! But the buildings are so so pretty. Haha I just found out that union stations are so called cos they are stations in which more than one railway companies reside. oops.

We then had our lunch at a restaurant, Capitol City Brewing Company right next to union station.

they actually prepared a menu for us! cool. bierhaus burger and lots of coffee for me!

everready to pose, even though the camera was far from me and i wasn't warned. haha!

good ol cheesy burger and fries.

they served brownies, and it is soo pretty! enjoyed it.

One of the perils of being a statue is that birds tend to mistake you for their bathrooms. This statue in front of union station is of Christopher Columbus, and there's an Indian on one side, and i can't remember what's on the other side. There's also a replica of the liberty bell from philadelphia.

On the way to the White House through Pennsylvania Avenue..

FBI building! cool.

White House

statue of erm, jackson. this is in the park in front of the whitehouse. armed with tourist mentality and many many cameras, the whole group happily snapped this, and the tour guide went, 'do they know what they are taking?' bah, so show off.. so what if you know what that is. hmph..

tour guide says this lady has been camping here for 20+ (?!) years.

and there!

the president wasn't around.. If he was around, there would be snipers on the roof! kinda scary huh. like if you suddenly felt like doing some thing crazy nxt thing u noe u're probably dead.

cameras, what they use to film news when they go 'Reporting from the White House...'

There is a statue in each of the four corners of the White House garden. When America was founded they didn't know how to fight, so they got these Europeans generals to help them. Sooooomething like that.

This photo is very natural!

I thought this was hilarious.. all the hooha over a squirrel. The squirrel must be laughing at us..

he must be thinking: '...'

Albert Einstein Memorial

I love this statue of him. It's outside the National Academy of Sciences on Constitution Avenue, in a shady little corner. Really feels like he's a lonely old man reading his book in a park. Well, like the Harvard statue where u gotta touch his shoe to i dunno, get rich? [and the shoe very shiny one], in order to get clever u just have to rub einstein's nose. haha! I love how it's constructed, sturdy, and I can totally imagine lots of kids climbing over him and having fun. It looks round and friendly, like a playground to me, and he is seated in such a relaxed and inviting manner

lovely. On second thoughts, it looks like he's looking at his nose, and pondering why so many pple are rubbing it. haha.

Vietnam War Memorial

The Vietnam War Memorial was built after a fund raising effort through private donations. It was designed by US architect Maya Lin. When she handed it to her professor, she received only a B+ for the assignment. However, she won majority of the votes, even though there were thousands of entries for the design. I like it. It's a very simplistic, yet special, and the place gave me a sense of peace and calm.

The names are in chronological order, a cross stands for a missing person, and a diamond stands for the deceased.

there's a directory on each end for the soldiers' loved ones to locate their name.

Lincoln Memorial

The Lincoln Memorial is aligned with the Washington Monument [in my background], and the World War II Memorial [behind the Washington Monument].

Okok, enough of me.

This is the very position, right in front of the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King stood when he gave his "I Have A Dream" speech! There were so many people in attendance that day that the crowd spread all the way to the World War II memorial behind the Washington Monument.

In the temple. It is said that his hands sign the letters 'A' and 'L' in American sign language. On the 2 sides of the statue, there are walls with his speech engraved on it. One of it has a spelling mistake! Can you spot it? Haha.

Yes, I know you couldn't see cos it's way too small. But here's the answer. In the first column, 'Future' is spelt as 'Euture'.. I heard there was some attempt to rectify it. After the memorial, it was time to head for home.. It's a pity we didn't get to see everything properly, but I'll be heading down in spring!

Lucky Raju was staying in Washington DC for the weekend with his cousin. He has cousins everywhere! Boo! [The other one is in Boston!]. We dropped him in front of a Smithsonian Museum instead of the Union Station cos there was a jam on the roads.. Haha, he smilingly said that if it was a girl, they wouldn't have done that. Which I think is very true. Well, at least the lucky fella got to go into the museum and check it out.. Pretty interesting I should think.

No prizes for guessing who was the architect here at the Art Museum, east wing. Sometimes I think he's kinda cheapo, using just one concept for so many of his designs!

Jefferson Memorial. Didn't go in, no idea what's in there. Only know that the cherry trees by the Potomac River nxt to it are a gift from Japan, and they are going to be very pretty pretty in spring, and that is when i'll be going there!! muahaha!

Watergate Complex, where the watergate scandal took place, said the tour guide. To this I heard guojun saying 'oh yah, shui3 men2 shi4 jian4' and to this, I made a mental note to check it on wiki. ha! now I know what it is!

Zooming back.

Hoss' Steakhouse

We stopped by here for dinner. Here's my medium sized, mediumly done steak w sauteed mushrooms.There was also a salad + soup bar, and I enjoyed an ice cream cone which wasn't quite creamy enuf, it was kinda you know, sludgy.

After dinner, we continued on a looong ride back. We were quite alarmed when the bus left the highway and started going in dark streets.. and turned into this dark dark car park...

Turned out that that was the bus company's carpark [buspark?] and we were to change buses there. No idea why we had to since the bus driver was freaking the same?! Well at least we had a toilet break there. Spent some time in the little log cabin that was the company's office cos there was only One toilet for allll of us.

It was a great 2 days of vacation, smack in the middle of the week. Really appreciative of how the company went through great lengths to take good care of us.