July 2nd: Botanic Gardens, Smithsonian Castle, Greyhound to Nashville

I woke up sometime. I was leaving Washington DC this day but the bus was leaving at 5pm or so, so I had time to see a few more things.

Jay wasn't very sure what he wanted to do. I said I was thinking of seeing the Botanic Gardens and he thought that seemed cool so we wandered over there together.

It was very hot outside again. Inside the Botanic Gardens was much nicer even though it was a glass house. It was regulated with water spray and other stuff so the temperature was very good.

I saw a movie about Orchids a while ago called Adaptation. It was fairly unusual and good. Not sure if this is an Orchid...

We finished looking through here. Jay and I walked along the mall for a while. Jay wanted to have a look at more of the Museum of American History whereas I wanted to get back to the hostel by 3pm so that I could get some food and be ready for the bus. I don't like needing to rush to get to places in time. I said goodbye to Jay. It was cool hanging out with him for a few days. He is an interesting person. He owned a houseboat in San Francisco Bay for a while! So we talked a little bit about sailing. I will learn how to sail soon. He is also into downhill mountain bike riding. He is coming to Thailand in November/December and so we might meet up in Australia and see some things after that.

I went over to see the Smithsonian Castle since it has the memorial site of the guy who initially funded all of these free museums, and I thought I should see this building before I left since I think it's the iconic one.

Ashes, or something, of James Smithson, founder of the Smithsonian Institution.

Inside. The building smells a bit funny. It might be the sweat on every body due to the heat outside. I'm not sure.

"Please do not place drinks or food on the antique table".

The castle.

This building actually just contains a general small collection of stuff and I think it's purpose is supposed to be to give you an idea for which of the other museums you might want to go and see. I didn't really look at anything inside this building because I had looked at enough museums. I was looking more at the building, and sitting down on their seats because my feet were sore.

I made my way back to the hostel.

They are playing more music on the "mall".

They've got some kind of festival going on here.

These kids are painting the globe for some reason. There are lots of places here where they're trying to get American citizens to sign up for 'peace corps'. It seems to be where you can volunteer a year, or so, of your time to go away to some other country and help out where some things are needed to be done. It seems like a pretty cool concept to me. It would probably be a great experience for people doing that.

I walked through a park.

Metal tree.

Capital building again.

Before getting to the hostel I went to Safeway and bought some food. I bought some flat bread/pita bread and hommus (good idea from Amanda from when we were on the train to Bristol!), two nectarines, yoghurt, water, cashew nuts, and probably something else. Then I went back to the hostel.

I put my mp3 player on the cupboard while I took my shoes off (you have to remove your shoes while inside at this hostel), and I put the yoghurt in the freezer so that maybe it would stay cold for a while longer on the bus journey and not go bad. I did a few more things and then I got my stuff together and left. A while later, while on the bus, I realised that the yoghurt was still in the freezer and the mp3 player still on the cupboard. Damn! I have had the mp3 player for many years and needs to be upgraded so I can not be too upset. I still had my camera.

The greyhound station in Washington DC. It's looking a little more ghetto today than it did on the previous journey.

Awesome food. I also got blueberry muffins.

Tasty hommus. Pita bread and hommus is a fairly good mix I think.

Shoes and shirt are required! I'm travelling through Virginia.

Nice looking houses.

The landscapes here all look very nice. It's a nice looking country. It's a pity about all the highways and lack of trains.

This bus journey has a duration of 16 hours I think. It is long. I got on at 5pm and I think I was scheduled to arrive in Nashville at 9am the next day. The bus was also very full so I had to sit next to someone. It's difficult to sleep in a bus sitting up right while next to someone. The people on the bus were a little bit 'dodgy' looking. But I was fairly sure I wouldn't be decapitated and then it just becomes an interesting experience.

July 1st: Museum of American History,

I woke up, hung around the hostel for a while, and then the Texan guy, Jay proposed that we walk to the Museum of American History together since he was going that way also. On the way there someone handed me some pamphlets trying to get us interested in some kind of religion. The Texan guy is fairly against this stuff and I'm an atheist, so once we figured out what it was, he walked back and handed it back to the lady who gave it to us. She looked very disappointed and was not very cheery at all when she said "thanks" for having received it back.

We sat down in a nice park for a few moments. Nice grass here.

The front of the building for the Museum of American History.

We went into the Museum and Jay and I decided to go separate ways since walking around a museum in a group is probably not fun and it would be better to have the independence to wander around wherever you want.

I wandered around and looked at a bunch of stuff.

Hats for the leaders of fire fighter people.

Big telescope.

pop-up book.

This is talking about a scientist who decided to investigate food, I think. He tested to see if food preservatives made any harmful impacts on people. He tested food heavily coated in preservatives on these people in the picture. He found that the preservatives were poisonous. Food manufacturers weren't happy. Independent tests were done. Results contradicted that the preservatives were poisonous, and they were allowed to keep using them.

Life vest from a titanic survivor.

They had a nice section about river boats. I liked this section.

This is a house that was going to be destroyed. Neighbours were upset by that so they contacted the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian decided to take the house and put it into their museum. This exhibit talks about the different people who lived in this house and what kind of life they had. It was quite interesting.

Upstairs they had a nice section about some of the wars that the United States has been involved in. Here is some of George Washington's clothes showing how tall he was. He was fairly tall I think.

This is a gunboat they found at the bottom of a river. It was built in 1776 and also sunk in that year.

I finished up at the museum and then headed back. Alison, the girl from Bournemouth, was very excited to go to Nando's tonight. She likes the restaurant quite a lot. So Alison, Jay and I went there. I had a chicken burger type thing and some chips. It was fairly good. This is the only Nando's in the United States!

June 30th: Natural History Museum, Jefferson Monument

Writing the entry very late, so I've forgotten what I did exactly.

I think I woke up and then wasn't very motivated to go and do things. It's very hot outside so when you go outside to walk to the museums it is very sweaty. Also, I've seen a lot of museums now and they start to become less exciting.

I probably hung out with some people from the hostel for a while in the morning. Then I walked over to the Natural History Museum.

A silly picture of me.

Some cool buildings.

On the way to the Natural History Museum I went into the National Portrait Gallery. Here they have lots of portraits of the American presidents, portraits of other people, and some landscape pictures. I liked the landscape pictures more. I think this is Yellowstone National Park. It looks really good. I'll have to go there.

I think this is in South America somewhere. It looks good. I'll have to go there.

This is called 'The Grand Painting' or something. It's a fictional painting about some stuff that could exist in the United States somewhere. It's fairly big and looks good.

I checked out the portraits of the American presidents for a while but they didn't interest me very much. They just seemed like portraits to me. I think I would find it more interesting to learn about what they each did. Although I found it a bit interesting to think that the physical material of the painting existed in front of those presidents as an artists was painting, possibly during some kind of important historical time.

I left the Portrait Gallery and then went over to the Natural History Museum.

Along the way I saw the FBI building. Here it is. This is where Fox Mulder did his stuff.

I got into the Natural History Museum and I read some stuff. I don't really understand these types of museums because the things that you see are usually artificial recreations of an animal or something with some brief explanation of what it is. I think they are supposed to inspire you to be interested in learning about these sorts of things by providing some access to the knowledge, but I think they have lost their value now that all this stuff can be found easily on the internet. But I gave it a shot and I found all this chemical/biological stuff to be fairly interesting and inspired me to want to know more. I saw some other cool things also.

This rock is 4600 million years old. I found that to be fairly amazing. Somewhere else I think I read that the oldest rocks on earth are 1600 million years old. I think it is a kind of strange and cool concept that somewhere other than earth there were rocks forming a lot earlier than they were on Earth.

They had a thing with butterflies inside.

Some scientists walking around on solidified lava.

There was an exhibit of photography from a competition. I think I was not allowed to take photos. The photos were amazing... There was one taken from underwater, with a wave breaking  above, and a turtle swimming along with the wave.

I left the museum, went out onto the "mall" and found that they were playing some music out there. They have a lot of pavillions set up where they will play different styles of music through the week, I think. At this time they were playing stuff at the "motor city" one. I guess that's supposed to be Detroit. They were playing kind of soul/funk type stuff.

I still had a bit of sunlight and I'd wasted some of the morning so I decided to walk to the Jefferson Monument. This is a building along the way. Washington DC is filled with these kinds of government buildings.

Walking around the river toward the monument. The sun was going down so it was a great temperature and a great feeling with the sunset.

This was a cool monument. Like the Lincoln Monument, this one has quotes from Jefferson around the edges which seem quite nice.

I was very hungry so I walked back to the hostel and cooked lots of pasta for myself. It was great.