Washington DC is one of those cities that everyone knows due to its amazing and fundamental history – it’s one that I knew I had to experience for myself. Luckily, Philly is conveniently close to a lot of interesting cities and DC is one of those!
After a very bumpy bus ride of just about 2½ hours, we arrived in DC. It was very different from what I had experienced in Philly. Even the train station looked like a monument on its own! Out we went from the station and right away, we were surrounded by these clean, white, and majestic buildings, like the city was built for royalty (but it is the capital, after all, so I guess that makes sense). All the buildings looked very important and were covered in lots of American flags.
Even though we only got to stay about a day and a half in DC, we saw so many things! Luckily for us, a lot of the great sights were within walking distance – which means that we really got in our daily steps, and then some! On the first day, we managed to see both the White House and Lincoln Memorial, along with the Washington monument as well. It was amazing to be able to see these famous places in real life since it’s something I have only seen in movies so many times before. Being able to see it for myself really changes my outlook. I believe that next time I see it in a video or somewhere else, I will have a more dynamic picture in my head of what that place is actually like, and I love that.
On the second day, we went to visit the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Personally, I am not very interested in art, but I was still curious to see the differences that you might find between the types of paintings you might find in the U.S. compared to Europe. What came to me as a surprise was that there were a bunch of paintings from Europe as well. The museum of natural history, however, really fell into my interests. The museum was huge and they had made a big deal out of the display, including everything from dinosaurs to the evolution of mankind.
An extra fun thing that may not interest a lot of people, but really captured our eyes, were all the squirrels running around. Every time we would enter an area that was even remotely green, there would be at least one squirrel. It was clear that they were used to human activity as they were not scared of us at all! Some even tried to approach us (to check if we had food on us presumably). By the end of this short, but adventurous trip, we had made it a thing to always call out if we saw a squirrel so we could stop and look at it. We just couldn’t get enough of these fuzzy little cuties.
