elis' travel journal

W a s h i n g t o n D . C . T r i p

.......................me, posing in front of the Capitol ;-) a lot more pics tomorrow!!!........................

H O U S I N G

Fortunately, we could stay with Sharon O'Shaugnessy's Dad, who is living in Arlington (VA), just about 10 min outside of the city center. He - Stan (70) and his Italian wife Cicci (about 60) were like real grandparents: caring about us, organizing info about the city, helping us to find our way around, telling us what is too "dangerous" for us girls....

I can tell you... what an experience!! If you all could just meet Stan and Cicci for one day - you knew how much fun we had living with them, surviving their "fuzzing around", listening to their endless stories, wondering about their odd sleeping routine (they always go to bed at about 5-6 in the morning and sleep until the afternoon...) and about Cicci's all too obvious Italian accent (after 40 years in the States - just incredible!!!) Sometimes, it was just a bit hard to escape their overwhelming love towards their (I assume quite rare) guests!!! ;-) Cicci would tell us everything about her wedding about 5 times (the whole house is full of pics of her wedding dress) and Stan gave us a history lesson about the Austro-hungarian empire and the Russians from midnight to 1 o'clock..... :I
But all together it was the best thing that could happen to us, to have the possibility to stay with them, and it was much better than any hotel! We had our own (a bit too much) air-conditioned bedroom and an own bathroom! In the morning (soon after the couple's night had begun) we found a nicely prepared breakfast (or, um, how Cicci used to say "braskfut") and heaps of tourist information, maps and brochures about Washington D.C.!


T H E D R I V E

Okay - let's pass over to the really exciting part of our "journey" (probably more appropriate than the word "trip", as it makes it seem longer) : the car ride...
Well, yeah, as you can imagine there has not really been one ride in the "Nanny convertible" that took place without any troubles... I think Michi and I could already make a list of things from "minor to major car problems" or something like that. (See next entry please... ;-) )

Anyway, our first day in Wash D.C. we planned to already explore the city for the whole afternoon, so that we could leave at about 3 again the next day. Well, of course our littl eplan did not really work out like this... Although we left at about 10 and the car ride from TInton Falls to Arlington usually takes about 4 hours, we ended up sitting in the car until 6 o'clock!!!! Which is about 8 hours! Can you believe that? The problem was just, that we first lost the way for about 15 minutes, then we had a lunch break stop, and when we wanted to leave the service area and go on, we noticed (on the Highway!) that we had a flat tire! Perfect!


T H E B R E A K D O W N

So there we were standing on the breakdown lane of the NJ Turnpike, two blonde Austrian girls with no notion about cars whatsoever, sweating in the heat of the NJ summer at noon, having no idea what to do with our dear friend the Convertible with one working tire less.... (the scene was perfect for an American road movie, don't you think)
The terrible thing was that we were literally still in sight of the service area (with the redeeming gas station and garage!) but still could not just turn around and go back there, although we were thinking about that, as we had no clue what to do next - as we couldn't jsut go on with a flat tire in the direction of WDC Well, so we decided that the best thing would be to ask for help, and we found ourselves standing next to the Highway, showing the with super-high speed passing cars some sort of "we-would-like-to-hitchhike" sign, cause we didnt know how to stop a car in a better way.... After about 5 minutes a man in his 50s stopped for us and - thank god - and took off the (quite ripped off by that time!) tire to put on the spare tire (luckily we had one) for us... If it hadn't been for him (he was really nice, btw) I am sure we would still stand there right now, as noone else seemed to be interested in us and I think we wouldn't have made it to change a tire in a million years.
After we had four tires again, the man finally advised us to really go back to the gas station behind us, as it would be too dangerous going on with the spare one, given that the next service area would be too far away! So he left us and I was walking in the grass next to Michi who tried to drive the car back to the gas station - going backwars along the breakdown lane at minimum speed, stopping whenever traffic was passing us coming out of the service area (of course, there had to be a complex turn which made evrything still harder!) But finally we managed to get there and could buy a (yet too expensive at 220 $ - but of course at Sharon's expenses) tire for our car and could go on towards WDC..........

And to explain our 9 hour car ride, I have to confess that we got lost again, after we were already only about 10 minutes away from Stan's house, cause we took the wrong exit, which lead us straight to the (I hate it now!) Dulles airport 20 miles out of WDC - WITHOUT (*looking very angry*) any possibility to turn around! So we had to go the whole way and the whol thing cost us about one hour and a half I guess... When we were already in Arlington later on, we suddenly ran out of gas and could escape into a gas station just in time! (Would have been the next tragedy) Fortunately, Stan (with who I was in constant telephone contact) waited for us at one of the last intersections and so he led us home the final minutes...

THE CITY

Finally! After this almost never-ending trip, we took a quick shower and headed into the city, where we had a first look at all the monuments in the center, and had dinner in Goergetown, which is a very very nice place outside the city. We strolled around in the evening sun, had ice cream and went into "Barnes and Noble", my absolute favorite book store in the world!
The next day we seized the whole morning an the afternoon until about 4 o'clock to explore everything and could indeed see the bigger part of the sights there. All in all, the atmosphere of WDC was again (;like NYC) surprisingly calm and relaxed to me, and I really like being there. On the other hand, WDC is of course not a town where there's so much "hustle and bustle" - it is mainly made up of monuments, memorials (of wars and presidents), museums and other sights, famous buildings, etc. But it was great to be there once, at places I've seen so many times on TV and that are so famous.

Things we've seen:
- The White House (would have loved to go inside, but I think that's not possible anymore!)
- The Capitol (also just got pics from the outside)
- Lincoln Memorial (where the big statue of Abe is sitting)
- Washington Monument (the big Obelisk and Mall which can be seen in Forrest Gump)
- Korean War Memorial, World War II Memorial, etc...
- Arlington Cemetery
- Pentagon (just out of the taxi cab, not really spectacular)

So, we had quite a packed program, and I enjoyed it very much! Now that we've seen NYC and WDC we're also plannign to go to Philadelphia, but probably just for one day (and by train! LOL)

Hope you're all doing good and you are saving powers for answering my soon-coming e-mails.... :-P
See you guys soon! It's just 3 more weeks now here... mit einem lachenden und einem weinenden Auge!

Yours,
Elis

posted by elis in wanderlust @ 4:19 AM