5 Sept – Washington
We had breakfast with Todd then he dropped us to the station on his way to work. The trip only took a couple of hours, hardly had time to sit down and it was time to get off again! David had already told us how to get to our hostel so we caught the subway red line to Takoma and hey presto there was the hostel almost across the road from the station. First tho we passed the undertakers as you will see in the pics, haha, Washington was full of funny moments like that.
The hostel had a great feeling to it, definitely a bit querky, funny things all over the place. We were in a 6 bed room on the second floor. We dropped out gear and headed into town to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. It was 3pm when we entered and it closed at 5.30pm, only just got to see most of it, when it closed Kent found out that the Renwick Art Gallery was open until 7pm so we headed a few blocks up to it. It was huge and we raced around like mad things seeing all we could. It was also really interesting, we were going so fast we only took a couple of pics, one we have put here and that was because the woman in the exhibit looked SO real that we expected her to talk to us any minute.
When we were tossed out of there at closing we headed for Dupont Circle, Kent had read in our guidebook that it had good cheap places to eat (6 years ago...) so we walked for at least an hour (yes Carol is losing weight easily) to find the place was also huge and packed solid with people we didn't want to go in. We settled for a small Peruvian restaurant next door. Food prices always look cheap here until you add the tax and the tip and then it's about the same as eating out in NZ ($ for $).
Since about 6pm the sky had clouded over and was looking threatening, we were expecting it to come down in a deluge at any moment. The news carried headlines about hurricanes in the south and the hot weather we had been experiencing for the last few days was no doubt connected to that. It held off until we got back to the hostel and when we woke in the morning it was raining.
6th Sept
We got out the umbrella and headed back into town to do some more museums but after getting off the subway and trying to walk a quarter of a block and getting absolutely drenched in the now torrential rain we gave up. Coffee and a sub and back to the hostel. Used the time to catch up on email there then it was gear up and head for our next train, the train back to Chicago on route to St Louis.
It wasn't the weather that made the train late to leave although we had been half expecting it, it was the transfer of some equipment from another train that held it up. Luckily we had gone to the wrong desk to enquire and the woman had found out and told us the train would be at least 2 hours late so we made ourselves comfortable and waited. At the proper desk and over the pa system they never said how long it would all take so people waited diligently in lines for the train which would be ready at any moment. We made friends with two asian boys from New York we had been sitting with and got on board near the start of the line as a group, thereby enabling us to grab a good seat. Carol put on her new neck pillow (purchased at Macy's in NY for $8) which has stereo speakers in it and fell asleep fairly promptly after a relaxation cd accidently came on her ipod. Kent finished off a book he had been digesting (hint hint) and had a hit and miss nights sleep.
