Hello readers! To give you a little background, the stated purpose
of this road trip was for my sister Aliece to find herself after graduating
high school. I am merely a driver and part-financier. When
I wrote this
originally, we were about to begin Week 3 and I didn't know if she
had
yet achieved this goal, hence the subject of this section. (I
myself had found
her on several occasions, but I was sure not to tell her and ruin the
suspense.)
Aliece picked out some places she wanted to go, mostly from books like
Eccentric America and Offbeat Museums--so let that also
serve as a warning. =)
DAY 1 (6/23):
We leave around 11:30 a.m. heading toward Washington, D.C. This
will
be our longest driving day. Aliece had seen in her book that
the world's
largest chair and the world's largest bureau/dresser/chest of drawers
(whatever you want to call it) were in North Carolina, on our way up.
So
of COURSE we had to stop and see those. We knew that the chair
was in
Thomasville, and that it was in the downtown area. We found that
one
pretty easily. It was a nice-looking chair with a nice-looking
plaque explaining
how Thomasville had beaten five other cities for the "World's Largest
Chair."
Finding the bureau, however, was another story.
We knew that it was in High Point, NC, but beyond that I could not
find any information on it. So we drove to High Point and started
asking around. No one really seemed to know where it was!
So we
just drove around looking for it. After a while, we gave up and
started heading back to the highway. As we were going along the
road, I happened to look down one of the side streets, and there it
was! Just a big old dresser sitting there in a grassy lot!
So we
went over and took some pictures.
We made it to our hotel in DC about 12:30 a.m.
DAY 2 (6/24):
We didn't really have a whole lot planned for this day. The only
thing on the agenda was to visit the National Cryptologic Museum and
a pen shop in DC that Aliece wanted to see.
The museum was pretty cool. It is run by the NSA and talks about
the
history of the NSA and code-breaking in general. I thought the
coolest part was the Enigma display they had. They had a few
different Enigma machines out there, including one you could try out
yourself. They also had the machine that some folks invented
to help
break the Enigma code, which was HUGE! It was about 20
times the
size of the Enigma (which is only about the size of a typewriter).
We also liked the group of young military men in uniform who stopped
by to tour the museum while we were there. =) They were a pretty
big
group comprised of different branches of the military. They looked
like they may have been on a field trip of some sort.
We then drove back to the hotel and parked the car, where it would
sit for the remainder of our visit to DC. (I am all about walking
and taking the subway rather than paying for parking whenever
possible.) We walked the two blocks to the Metro station and
rode
down to where the pen shop was. After visiting that, we wandered
around downtown for a while. We walked by the Old Post Office
Building, which is in the Federal Triangle area. We took a free
tour
up to the top of the tower and checked out the view as well as the
bells in the tower. We went by the FBI building to see if they
offered any sort of tour, and found out that they did! But of
course
we had missed the last one by 30 minutes. So we planned to do
that
the next day. We then went and had dinner at a place called
Potbelly, which is kind of like the Corner Bakery, but much cooler.
(Side note: We decided that, as much as possible while staying
in a
given city, we were NOT going to eat at places that we could eat at
in Atlanta.) It was also while we were wandering downtown that
we
had our first encounter with a phenomenon that would soon become
common on this trip: people asked US for directions! I
guess we
just looked like we knew where we were going. And what's
more, we
GAVE them the directions because, even with our limited experience
of
the city, we knew the way!
DAY 3 (6/25):
We took the Metro down to Union Station and got on one of the trolley
tours (thanks, Grandma!). This was a cool one because you could
get off
at any of the stops and do whatever you wanted to do and then just
catch the next trolley. We got off at the FBI building to do
the
tour we missed yesterday. It was pretty cool, even though we
were in
a group with a bunch of Girl Scouts. =)
We caught the trolley again and rode it to the White House. There
are guards all around it and you can't get too close. So we went
to
the one place where you could take a picture and took one. We
got
back on the trolley and rode to the National Cathedral. We spent
a
lot of time there. That place is awesome. It is the second-largest
cathedral in the US, and the sixth-largest in the world! We walked
through the garden and the cathedral, and one thing we noticed is
that there is a plaque on EVERYTHING. "In memory of" or "Placed
to
the glory of God in memory of"....every last arch, bench, pew,
window, and hallway.
We got back on the trolley and the next time we got off was for the
Lincoln Memorial. We saw that and then caught a shuttle trolley
to
Arlington Cemetery. That place is HUGE. That is a whole
day's trip
in and of itself. We walked to Kennedy's grave, and just as we
were
approaching it, they said that they were closing the area for some
kind of service that was going to be going on there. DOH!
So we got
to see the Eternal Flame, but didn't get close enough to feel the heat.
=)
We then had just enough time to wak through the memorial to Women
in Military Service before catching the shuttle back to the Lincoln
Memorial.
This place was cool, mainly because it was inside and it was SO HOT
outside.
(It has been very hot every day of this trip so far.) But
I also enjoyed seeing
the displays of the different ways in which women have been serving
our country.
The design of the building was also very interesting--check out the
picture on
this site if you want to see it.
We rode the trolley back to Union Station. (The trolley stopped
many
places throughout the day, but those were the ones where we got off.)
We decided to go back to our hotel room and freshen up a little
before dinner.
We remembered seeing some cool places to eat in the Dupont Circle
area while we were on the tour, so we hopped the Metro and went back
there for dinner. We ended up eating at Universal Pasta, which
was a
pretty cool restaurant there on the circle. (They had a dessert
that
had one scoop of chocolate gelato and one scoop of vanilla, covered
in espresso. Of course I got it.....mmmm!) We also walked
around
there for a while, just taking everything in.
When we went back to our hotel, we stopped by CVS so that I could get
some drugs. (I was coming down with a cold that I had caught
from
our other sister, who lived with me at the time.) I didn't know
which
brand or kind would be best, so I just bought 3 or 4 bottles of different
stuff and decided I would make myself a cough-syrup "cocktail."
It
seemed to work pretty well. =)
Well, this is getting long, so I think I'll end it for now. Stay
tuned for the next installment, when we go to Hershey, PA, and then
on to New York City!