washington d.c.

wow! i had a great weekend! i went to washington d.c. on friday night. (4:30 h / $35 roundtrip) i had to work longer than 6:00 pm and my bus left at 7:00 pm from 88 east broadway (chinatown). so i was really in a hurry because i needed to be there 20 minutes earlier. otherwise they could sell my ticket to other people. but i managed to be there at time when an asian girl braught some chairs and boxes to sit on until we waited for the bus. she was afraid that we could run away for some reason... it was so funny when we sat down on boxes in the middle of chinatown - and on the sidewalk! we all laughed a lot.

but the bus was okay. it wasn't that overloaded some guys had told me, the ac worked and we were only 30 minutes late :) but the "bathroom" was really disgusting! i was content with the "eastern travel" company - it was better than other chinatown-buscompanies i heard from. so remember that, if you need to travel from nyc ;)

yvonne (a friend from the orientation week) picked me up in nw d.c. around 12:30 am. the town is really beautiful! a very nice landscape, big and expensive houses with unfenced gardens. and there are no high buildings in the city... it't so different from nyc.

on saturday we did a sightseeingtour with a bus (free reboarding). so we visited

• the arlington memorial (jfk's grave, tomb of the unknowns, arlington house)

(there are guards 24/7 at the tomb of the unknown soldier; changing of the guard every hour)

• the white house

• washington monument

• capitol

• jefferson memorial

• f. d. roosevelt memorial.

but it was really silly to buy a ticket for $ 20 because we walked most of the way (the sights are close and the inner city isn't very big). and unfortunately we missed the last bus so we had to walk all the way back to the parking garage...
but the buildings are very beautiful! usually i don't linke the boring cultural tours that much but i really enjoyed our washington tour. next time i have to visit some of the great museums :)

oh and we saw the pentagon by acciddent when we got lost before our tour.

pentagon

yvonne and me at the museum of modern art

in the evening our disco plans failed but we were to the big tysons shopping-mall and had a lot of icecream at "cold stone creamery" and a cinnamon-vanilla-chocolate-cake at "cinnamon". you really have to try that if you are in the u.s.


on sunday we visited the lincoln memorial which we hadn't visited on saturday. after that we went to tysons again - but this time for shopping! it's so huge! but i managed not to spend so much money ;) and i'm so happy that we've got h&m over here :)

lincoln memorial

lincoln

tysons

german chocolate