My weekend in DC

When I woke up to the groan of my alarm I was instantly in a good mood because despite being 5.15 on a Saturday morning  I was bound for Washington DC with my best friends here at Penn State. 

Okay let me put some content in this.  This weekend was a canning weekend at Penn State where most of the students in university clubs head out of town to raise money for THON (a dance marathon in March for children with cancer). At the same time many of the students who aren’t canning take it as an opportunity to go home for the weekend.  As a result the university organized a small day trip for those of us who can’t go home to Washington DC !

 Groggy eyed and disheveled we boarded the bus at campus and promptly fell asleep on each other. After three and a half hours our bus entered Washington DC and we pulled up next to the Hirshhorn museum. The first thing we did was go in search of food, which theoretically should be simple in a large city, but no one told us how utterly dead the centre of DC is on a Saturday morning ! As we trudged along near empty streets I gazed around wide eyed as we walked past the Federal Reserve, Fords Theatre ( where Lincoln was shot ) and the Department of Agriculture. Finally we stumbled upon a Pret a Manger – much to the delight of my London friends !

After curing our hunger with coffee and sandwiches we made our first tourist stop – the White House.  There was something surreal about standing outside one of the most famous buildings in the world, although when I mean ‘outside’  this should be loosely interpreted as ‘ hundreds of metres away under the watchful eye of machine gun toting guards’.  The White House itself was much smaller than I expected, but we did bump into a BIG star outside – Kaka the famous Brazilian football player ! Although I’m not really a follower of football, the boys we were with absolutely lost it at this point and joined the hoards of fans chasing after him for a photo. 

We tried to wave to Obama

After the Whitehouse we visited the Lincoln Memorial.  The Lincoln Memorial more than made up for the disappointing size of the White House. Not only is the building itself enormous but it also includes a seated sculpture of Lincoln of giant proportions and wall to ceiling quotes from his second inaugural  and  Gettysburg address.  The memorial also had incredible views towards Capital Hill, the reflecting pool and the Washington Monument. Unfortunately the sky remained grey all day, but on a sky blue day I imagine they would be jaw dropping.  

Washington Monument and reflecting pool

Lincoln Monument

Fellow exchangees

After a delicious lunch of falafel and salad from a road-side stall to fuel our aching legs (the founders didn’t think about potential tourists when designing their capital) we headed to the Earth and Space Museum. I have to admit I was not particularly excited by the prospect of attending a Space Museum, but I can say my expectations were blown away.  The museum made space and science ‘cool’ for someone like me who generally dislikes these subjects.  We attended the film ‘ Journey to Space’ whilst reclining on flat seats in the planetarium, learnt about space food and clothing and planes in WWII.

Space shuttles in the Earth and Space Museum

Although I have to admit, because I remain an eight year old at heart the best part of the museum was riding the space simulator in a mini space shuttle.  I was the pilot and drove my fellow gunner ( and exchangee Sukriti) crazy by constantly spinning our ‘shuttle’ upside down.  I’m sure the entire room could have heard the screaming and the hysterical laughing.  We then went crazy in the gift shop, where the boys managed to find orange spacesuits and very nearly got us kicked out for trying them on. 

By this point we were all starving and in search of good food. We stumbled across a pizza bar called &Pizza and I’m so glad we did because the pizza had to be one of the best things I’ve eaten so far in America !  We paid $9 for the choice of as many toppings as we liked, including vegan cheese and vegan beef, which for the record tasted just like the ‘real’ thing after the pizza had been cooked. We made a few last minute Trump and Hillary themed purchases at a gift shop before stumbling back to bus, utterly exhausted after a whole day of walking.

The best vegan pizza

I want to note that one day was definitely not enough to see everything that DC has to offer. I would definitely recommend taking a couple of days to get to see all the museums, monuments and eateries DC has to offer.  Hopefully this won’t be the last time I get to see the capital.