Right… so I’ve been in the nation’s capital for 3 days now I guess… and my lack of posts probably says something to you… I guess it could say several things – it could say that I’m having so much fun that I haven’t had time to write anything… unfortunately that’s not the case… I mean, its not that I haven’t had fun. Oh, no… maybe it is… fun is not really the word. It’s been really interesting… I have enjoyed seeing all the places and museums and exhibits and things. The Smithsonian is amazing in all its facets… the monuments and statues are incredible and on such a massive scale – one that’s really hard to comprehend until you’re standing at the base of one of the million or so pillars, looking up at the ornate carvings… I mean, the time and energy involved must have been ridiculous. It’s not like I haven’t seen pillars before… I have… but I reckon if you took all the pillars here, and stood them on top of each other you’d get to the moon, and possibly back again… it’s like an ancient forest of marble. Crazy stuff…
So, the first day I reckon I walked for about 8 hours… timing myself I think I walk about 1 ½ steps per second, that’s 90 steps per minute, that’s 5400 per hour, so about 43,000 steps… at about 70cm per step (conservatively) that’s about 30km… I don’t know if that’s right or not… but the blisters on my feet tell me that it’s not too far off… I guess with time to stop and take photos, you might round that down to maybe 24 or 25km… either way… my feet are sore, and I’m looking forward to getting back to Toronto and wearing my sneakers for a couple of days… anyway; the first day… I first walked down towards Capitol Hill, found that, got some photos, walked around the back of it and bumped into a large group of girls (18-22yo) from salt lake city who got me to take their photo in front of one of the buildings – squealing when they heard me speak – its quite an experience… *coughs* then I walked back down towards the Washington monument, took some photos, then kept on in the same direction towards the Lincoln memorial… took some pictures… walked past the Vietnam memorial, took some pictures… kept on walking and got to the Thomas Jefferson memorial… just around sunset, got some nice photos there… walking walking, back across past the Washington monument, night time, got some more photos… saw the Whitehouse and thought “what the hell” walked to the white house, got some more photos… and then went back to the hostel… took my shoes off, realized that the pub crawl was about to start, put my shoes back on and headed out… had a few beers and got home at about 2am… not a bad day…
The next day I spent sleeping mostly… left the hostel at about 2pm and went to the museum of natural history, which was good, but not as good as the one in NYC… wandered around for a bit, decided to catch the Subway to Union Station, which was pretty cool, got some food, some more photos, and then headed back on the subway, transferring to a different line to go to a supermarket where I got some fresh fruit and some yogurt, which I ate when I got back to the hostel. Spent some time talking to some people that were heading next on their travels to NYC, and then got an early night.
Today, I’m going to walk past the Ford Theatre, maybe go to the holocaust museum… and then I think I’ll be just about done… It’s meant to snow this evening a fair bit, hopefully not enough to stop my bus leaving in the morning… we’ll see…
The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin. - Heinrich Heine
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment