Hayley & Shaun in Canada: Washington, DC

The capital! May 29th - June 2nd

As soon as we arrived in Washington on our train we were greeted with the same weather we experienced constantly for the next four days: HOT! It was unbearably hot and humid with no breeze or any relief at all unless you sat inside a coffee shop or spent the day in a museum in the air conditioning, which is exactly what we did!

But before all of that, we checked into our hostel which was pretty close to one of the main metro stations which made it easy to get around the main touristy areas. The hostel turned out to be really good. We were in a dorm room with about 7 other people but that was fine. It was all really clean and had a good common room with a huge TV and they provided toast and coffee in the mornings which was nice. The only problem was the room we were in was the only one without air-conditioning and it was the hottest room I've ever slept in, and we barely slept at all it was sooooo uncomfortable!

Anyways aside from the heat, we managed to enjoy the sites of DC including the National Mall, a big area with lots of museums and monuments including the Washington Monument and the Capital Building. We went to the Air & Space museum, which Shaun really enjoyed andwe spent a whole day at the Holocaust Memorial Museum which was very interesting and we didn't even get to see the entire thing! We also visited the American History Museum which had many different exhibits, but was quite crowded with school groups getting in our way!

On one afternoon we went and saw the White House, both sides, and it was much smaller in real life! But still very grand looking. We also went out to Arlington and saw the Pentagon memorial which was really nicely set up and was very moving and interesting to see.

Washington was different as it was a city, but didn't feel like New York or Boston. The suburban streets where really nice with brownstones and trees. The streets where all either numerical or alphabetical and ran in a grid that was confusing as it was 1st 2nd 3rd streets etc in one direction and then it went the same way the other direction with a main street in between, if you get what I mean? So it made it a bit confusing!

The hostel we stayed at made the trip more enjoyable too because we made friends with one of the guys who worked there and ended up hanging out with him playing wii on one of the night. It felt like we were hanging with friends at home which was really cool.

Overall we really enjoyed Washington as we saw many museums and more 'cultural' things than we did in other cities and saw many of the most famous sights like the White House and the Pentagon.

Check the pics and stay tuned for our next blog

Hayley & Shaun