We wake up at 6.30 am, instead of the scheduled 8.00: after all, for us it’s 12.30! We have breakfast at the hotel with doughnuts and with a lot of things that will become our regular meals: orange juice and grapes/apple jelly. We are so full that we skip lunch and have dinner at 6 pm at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum MacDonald’s.
So we pass in front of the White House, this time with daylight, and then we take a tour at its strange and funny gift shop (yes, even the White House has one, like almost any other attraction here in the US).
Then we go around the huge Washington Mall: we visit the Natural History Museum, the National Gallery, the Capitol, the Modern National Gallery, the Air and Space Museum, the Washington Monument, the WWII Memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial. We go back to the hotel, satisfied (and exhausted) at 9.00 pm.
Americans are very proud of their country, as we gathered from Hollywood movies and from our trip to New York. During our Capitol tour, they showed us a short film that very well represents this spirit, and summarizes it with a Latin motto, “E pluribus, unum”, “Out of many, one”.
Americans are all very friendly, and they always try to strike up a conversation with you. Today, a security officer at the Capitol, strikes up a conversation with Diego about his man satchel: at first Diego is afraid he’s going to get arrested, but soon he realizes that the officer just want to compliment him for his gadget, the first of many compliments he will receive for that thing. Don’t let the city map fool you: Washington Mall is HUGE, it seems like everything is close, but in reality everything is far: i.e., it will take you more than 20 minutes to go from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial at a quick pace. The park is very nice and clean, there’s just some crap all around the reflecting pool, thanks to all the birds who live there.
33°C
91°F
There are a lot of drinking fountains, you just have to get used to the chlorine taste. At the Air and Space Museum we have the scientific proof that Diego is cold blooded, with a body temperature of maximum 35°C, and that doesn’t look good!
