Categories
America Holiday 2018 New York Washington DC

State of the Blog 2018

Good Evening (or I imagine morning by the time you come to read this) Earthlings and all other unfortunate creatures who have stumbled upon this blog.

For those of you who have been sending me what can only be described as borderline hate mail, (you know who you are) I am pleased if not indifferent to say that the Holiday Blog is back. (Travel Blog would be a vast overstatement!!)

Coming live to you this evening from Washington DC just after the State of the Union Address was given by the President, just a few blocks down from where I am writing this…. More on that later…

Before I get to DC, I want to clear a few things up:

I haven’t been blogging the first 5 Days of this trip because I’ve been to NY before. Anyone with lots of time to kill can bore themselves silly here reading about that…

The first 5 days of this trip have been downtime. If you’ve been following my life, you should be aware that I’m currently between jobs just like the last time I was in the states, but this time I have a very exciting job lined up for my return! I’ve spent very little time in New York City itself, mainly keeping busy round New Jersey with the lovely Abrahams’ eating far too much food and buying too many clothes.

There are a few things I have noticed about America (Well NY/NJ and now Washington DC which I have noticed which I wanna just throw a bit of light on:

PoPo.

The Police/Pigs/Five-Oh/Feds. They everywhere! You can’t go more than 5 minutes without seeing another car (At least in NY/NJ and tonight in DC. It makes you feel kinda safe…. you know!

Subway

I forget that I should be more thankful for the clean, well signed, easy to navigate London Underground. I take it for granted. While the Subway is getting better (They have new signage/screens which are actually better than London!) We’re still waaay ahead for ease and clean… although some express trains would be nice!

Immense National Pride

Regardless of the Cheesy Wotsit running the country, everyone appears to be immensely proud to be American. This means putting an American flag on EVERYTHING. I’m pretty sure they’d stamp it on toilet seats if it wasn’t a bit weird. I bloody love it. If you hung Union Jacks up at home on everything you’d get accused of being part of a Britain First kind of fascist movement… but here, no matter creed colour or race, putting a flag on it is the right thing to do! I bloody love a bit of national pride!

Example of Immense Pride in Washington DC this eve… It’s a Government building of sort, but still an impressive number of flags!

Things settled, onto today….

I had a slow start this morning, repacking my suitcase and packing my backpack for my two nights in DC before I got a lift (Thanks Jem) to LaGuardia Airport where I endured an hour and a half delay before getting on the “Shuttle” service to DC. Literally the Plane equivalent of a bus.

The plane was tiny and so was the journey. By the time the Air-hostesses had given out drinks, it was time to collect in the garbage to land.  We’d barely gotten going.

I navigated the DC Metro to find my hotel, the Hamilton (Insert links to the musical, but as I’ve not seen it, I won’t understand you.) I’m right in Downtown DC and thanks to some sneaky booking, it didn’t cost an arm and a leg! (Loves a bargain me!).

I checked in, and went and got some food. It’s freezing cold, -5 here, so a big pizza did the trick before I went for a stroll…. I was hoping to catch the protests which were going on but sadly missed them.

Looking at some of the monuments and buildings at night, I’ve come to realize how little I actually know about the history of America (Which for an A Level Geography student is a little worrying!).

I wandered down to the Washington Monument, managing to take a wrong turn and not see the White House on the way (Well done!).

It’s cool, It’s imposing but I still don’t really know what it commemorates!

From the memorial, I wandered down towards the Capitol building where the State of the Union Speech was taking place. (I’m sure I wasn’t on the best route, but a guy who looked like Obama waved to me while he was being driven, so I was happy!)

The pavements were empty literally not a soul in sight, but Police on EVERY corner. I’m almost certain I’ve seen more police today here in Washington DC than we have in the whole of the UK!

Is that St Pauls?

From near the Capitol building, I asked a Police Woman where the Protest was… she told me I’d missed it by about 10 minutes and it had dispersed along the road… had I eaten quicker I might have seen it, but she assured me that Pizza was better than protest.

From the Capitol building, I found a Walmart (I do love a late night supermarket!) where I purchased some supplies (gotta be prepared!) before heading back to the hotel in a Taxi who told me all about how Uber was killing their trade. Sounds familiar!

Well… that as they say is that! I’m off to catch some sleep, I’ve got two beds to choose from (LOL) but I’m excited to be up and out tomorrow early doors to go and do some sightseeing and museum visiting!

Nighty Night… or good morning if you’re reading it back home!