I do like nice people, and out of the entire day, and all the fascinating things we’ve seen and done… I have to say the favourite part of my day was probably just talking with a local, after dinner. She started walking along-side of us and asked where we were all from and we told her that we were from Australia, and she started giving us trivia about the street we were in (U street, Washington DC). She was really, really nice and she seems to be well-known in the community because people say “hi” to her and she shouts out “HEY! WE’VE GOT AUSTRALIANS HERE!” and she was so sweet and when she found out we were from Brisbane, Australia she started hugging us all because of the floods. Honestly, the nicest person I’ve met whilst in America.
But that was only about two minutes out of our very long day involving 15km of walking – and to some freaky athletic people maybe this doesn’t sound like a lot but you have to remember one thing. I am a lazy person. This means we don’t walk or exercise more than necessary, ever.
We started off at the Washington monument and for those who don’t know what it looks like:
It took me until we were right at the base, going up in the elevator to realize that it was a monument to George Washington. I know, that sounds really slow but there are a lot of different Washingtons! I liked the Washington monument, it gave us a great view of the city. When it was completed, in 1885, it was the tallest building in the world. Of course, the Eiffel Tower quickly took over but it remains to this day the tallest stone structure (without a steel frame) in the world. But I don’t think the view was important to anyone, once we saw a pond of frozen water! We were all desperate to go and see it and this was the result:
The snapping sound of the ice was so cool! It was amazing. It’s amazing like how in Vancouver, the dog’s water bowl can freeze – how cool is that?
But the one thing that I really wanted to do in Washington D.C., more than anything, was to go to the National Museum of American History and this is the reason why:
(I hope you can all see my ruby slippers necklace)
YES! We are off to see the wizard! They are one of the original pairs of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in MGM’s production of “The Wizard of Oz”, one of my favourite movies. I have now seen and met Lorna Luft, I have seen Liza Minnelli and I have seen Judy Garland’s shoes. My life’s goals are slowly being completed. I absolutely loved seeing the shoes – it was incredible.
There are other parts to the Museum though, more than just seeing Pop Culture Icons through the years. There is the Presidential hall, which was interesting and the gowns of all the First Ladies which was incredible (I’ll upload photos to Facebook one day) but there was also an exhibit called “The Price of Freedom”. This exhibit was, quite obviously, about the wars that have affected America throughout the years and also about the 9/11 attacks. It was very confronting to see the images, pieces of rubble, to hear about the thousands of deaths. To hear about innocent lives being lost, and the delicacy of our humans lives is a very confronting issue. Seeing the thousands of names in the Vietnam memorial and to think that each of these people had a life, maybe a family and lost their lives – fighting for freedom. It’s a great big world. There are so many people in this world, each with their own lives. When I went through the exhibition, it was clear how much times have changed in the past 100 years, but I still get the feeling that USA is still a country at wars – with the signs at airports welcoming back troops, the discounts for troops and the fact that thousands of people have died in the Middle East.
From there we went onto the Reflective Pool. Who is that girl I see…
Oh right. No one. The pool had been drained. Disappointing.
We also went to the Lincoln memorial, and saw the man sitting in his chair. I have seen this before on television, but I’ve never realized just how big it was. That seems to be the thing in USA – like I mean Disneyworld was built on 87 000 acres – that’s just unfathomable, and also Arlington Cemetery. We didn’t see much of Arlington, seeing how it was at the end of a very long day but the amount of tombstones there was just… if you thought Toowong Cemetery was big, you haven’t seen anything yet.
Like I said, it’s very confronting to see all the people who have died fighting a cause, and that there was a massive section called “The Unnamed Soldier” and all of those bodies are unidentified. They weren’t always bodies, they weren’t always unidentified. They had a life, a personality. They had a name.
But tomorrow we head onto New York City, which will be completely different I’m sure. Right now, I’m watching NCIS which is awesome considering I’m in Washington DC, yes I did pretend to be Ziva for a bit but that’s not different from normal really. And, props to anyone who picked up the three song references in this post.
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