Washington D.C.

We arrived very late in D.C. on April the 26th. We planned to be there earlier but we missed our flight from Vegas that morning and therefor we missed our connection etc. But finally we got here. A cab brought us to our nice hotel on L street, so we had a nice location in town. Because we we're that late, the only place where we could eat that night was McDonalds. But hey, we're in the States so going eating at McDonalds is actually a must.

After 'dinner' and some sleep, we woke up early the next morning to discouver D.C. By accident, we started at the White House, which was only a few blocks from our hotel. At first, i didn't recognize it because we we're at the back of the most famous house in the world. When we walked around it, it became a more familiar sight.

Strange to stand in front of the White House which we see on tv a few times a week. It was very crowded with tourists (of course) but after a while lots of policemen removed many tourists. We didn't know why until we saw some cars drive to the White House. The first lady, the first kids and the first dog (yeah!!!) came out of the car so that was nice to see. Of course everybody thought that the president was there too but later that day we saw on tv that he was in Mexico, so we definately didn't see him. After we took some photos and feeded some squirrels, we moved on to the White House center where we read some about the history of the White House and the presidents of the United States. We also enjoyed the air conditioning since it was 98 degrees outside! Our next stop was the old postoffice of D. C. where some shops and restaurants are located now. Unfortunately lots of them were closed so it became a short stop. We moved on to the National Gallery. What a beautiful museum is this! Really nice. Some members of our group don't like to go to museums so we only spent an hour there but i could have spent half a day there. So we went back to the heat outside again and walked to the Mall and the Capitol. We saw how huge the Mall actually is and we were thinking of the inauguration of Obama and all those people standing on there. Now that we were there we could imagine how many people actually were there. It's so immense! We enjoyed the view of the Capitol and the Washington Monument on the other site. We wanted to walk there but we couldn't anymore because of the temperature and because we already walked so much that week.

So we bought tickets for the hop on - hop off bus. It was really nice that we did that because it brought us to places of D.C. that we might have missed without that bus. We drove through Chinatown to Dupont Circle to the National Cathedral, to Ambassy row, Georgetown, Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial.... All in a few hours, so that was very nice. My feet were thanking me for this bustrip. We hopped off the bus in front of the National Air and Space museum. My father and Chris really had the time of their lives there. I'm not that into planes etc. but i have to say that it was interesting. We ended our day with a nice dinner around the corner of our hotel. We had really loved this day and we were looking forward to our next day in D.C. which is such an interesting place.