My Trip to Washington D.C

Way back in February I took my mum to The Big Apple for her birthday, New York is one of her favourite places in the entire world - she loves the bright lights, towering buildings and yellow taxi's that just seem to appear out of nowhere; I am the complete opposite, I love quiet spaces, culture and being surrounded by history. Honestly, I am such a huge dork, and after going all that way on a plane (I  hate planes) I decided to reward myself by dragging my mum down to Penn Station at ridiculous o'clock in the morning, fuel'ing her up with coffee and bagels from Dunkin' Doughnuts, and then jumping on a train to Washington D.C

I have always wanted to visit Washington D.C. It is a place that we see so frequently on the news with reporters outside the Capitol building or the White House, but D.C is so much more than that. Aside from the popular tourist attractions, there are a number of restaurants, museums, nature walks and historic things to do and visit. Unfortunately, as we went in the middle of winter and it was below freezing we didn't get to do everything on our list, but we did get to see a lot of the city under the moonlight! We missed the last bus back to the train station, so we had to walk a good few miles whilst barely being able to feel our toes, the upside of this was that apart from the odd homeless person or tourist, there was absolutely no one else on the streets, it was almost as if we had the entire city to ourselves!

If you ever visit New York, the three and a half hour, sixty dollar (return) train ride down to D.C is well worth it! We arrived in DC at around 11am, and our train back to New York was at 9pm later that night, so we had a good 10 hours to explore the sights of D.C. I wish we would have spent more time in DC as there are so many museums I would have love to have gone to - I probably would have needed a good week to get around them all!

We paid thirty dollars for an all day bus ticket that let us get on as many buses around the city for twenty-four hours. The buses had tour guides, which was really useful as they were really knowledgeable about the many places the bus took us.  You'll find some of the facts below!

As I said, we arrived in DC just after 11am and hopped on a sight seeing bus shortly after. The bus took us around all of the main points of interest where we were allowed to get on and off as we pleased. We went around once, listening to all of the information, and then went back round again so we could get off at the Lincoln Memorial. From the Lincoln Memorial got on another bus that took us out to see the Pentagon and Arlington Cemetary; we mostly got on this bus because it was heated and we were cold, haha! The bus took us back to the Lincoln Memorial, where we went on a bit of an adventure around the city and after hanging out outside The White House we found ourselves in a McDonalds. After refueling we walked back to The White House, up to the Washington Monument and then down the mall to the Capitol Building.

By that point we were pretty tired and only had an hour until our train would be leaving, so we lurked around the station and visited a few of the shops before buying some candy and jumping back on a train to New York.

All in all it was a really great trip, I only wish I could have spent longer there (and that it wasn't so cold)

Washington DC  Fun facts!

Washington DC wasn't the original capital of the united states. George Washington originally set up his office in New York City. The Capital was later moved to Philadelphia but was later moved again to where it is today in 1790.  The Capital was moved further south to appease Thomas Jefferson and other southern leaders who feared northern control of the new nation.

George Wahington never got the chance to live in the White House, he died a year before its completion.

Washington D.C is not a state, it is a federal district made up of land donated by both Virginia and Maryland, and was named after the first president; George Washington.

The statue of Andrew Jackson riding a horse is made entirely of British canons.

The Martin Luther King jr memorial was made in China.

Washington D.C is only 10 miles square, it can be no bigger or no smaller. It says so in the constitution.

Kirstie xoxo 

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