Where New York is loud, sticky, dirty and busy, Washington is clean, calm and somewhat elegant. The differences are apparent as you drive into the city. The streets are more orderly and there are trees everywhere. The subway is orderly and tidy - smooth rides up escalator instead of hiking up dingy staircases - and a lot easier to understand.
After a rather delayed bus ride from New York, we pulled up near Union Station. My couchsurfing host had given me great directions to her place so it wasn't hard to find. Just a short metro ride and a short walk. After lugging my big bags around everywhere else I decided to store them in New York while I came to DC so I only had a backpack to carry. I'm staying with Fatima, a girl from Yemen who has been living in DC for about five years. It didn't take long for her to become one of the most fascinating and inspiring people I have met. In short, she's traveled A LOT, studied architecture, paints, cooks, is studying foreign policy, has written news articles pro bono, plays chess, tennis, swims everyday and the list goes on. She is on amazing woman! Fa hosts a lot, in fact she had surfers before I got here and has one coming after I leave.
There was still plenty of daylight left so we decided to visit some of the monuments. Fa hasn't seem many of them so we started at the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial. Mum and Dad had warned me that there was no mention of any other country, but I still found myself annoyed at it when I saw it for myself. It is a beautiful memorial and lists the names of the 58,000 US soldiers. There was a ranger talk starting in about 30 minutes so we walked over to the Lincoln Memorial for a quick look and then were back in time for the talk. Our ranger, John, was extremely passionate and great to listen to. He was particularly impressed that Fa had read the same book he's read for research. John told us the memorial was designed to bring together the past (the names of the soldiers) and the present. This is achieved by the reflective surface of the memorial, so you can see yourself while looking at the names.
Visiting the mall (the name given to the area with all the monuments) was great however it did hold one, rather major, disappointment. I'll set the scene. It's halfway through Forrest Gump. Forrest is addressing a huge crowd in front of the Washington Monument about the Vietnam War. Then Jenny comes running through the reflective pool. "Forrest! Forrest!" "Jenny! Jenny!". Forrest runs off the podium and into the pool. Great scene! Anyway, I was rather excited about seeing the pool....except it's not there. It's been drained because they are rebuilding it. Apparently the pool began to crack because the area used to be swamplands. John said some say it will be rebuilt by early next year, but other estimates put it years off.
We have some dinner and feeling a bit more energetic, decide to walk to Dupont Circle. It was a beautiful sight at night, even if we did see a rat. Fa said they were quite common in the city and perhaps one of the main reasons food and drink is banned on the metro. I've also seen more homeless people in DC than I have anywhere else I've been, which is sad. To think of the number of politicans that would see this everyday, and yet there are still people sleeping on park benches.
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