(continued from part I)
5:45 PM : We are out of the Museum, but we(Rahul and I) found ourselves on the other side of the museum. So, we ask others to meet us as Washington Memorial and we start for that. By this time we were hungry and looking for some food, but everywhere around there was only Non-vegetarian food, the only fuel that was powering me was diet coke.
We could see Washington memorial since the arrival at Smithsonian, but we found out how big it was when we reached there(Funny that even knowing that it is the world’s tallest stone structure I was thinking of this as small). We were extremely tired and had no energy to go any further. I wanted to see more places, so I asked Rahul to wait and relax and went ahead.
Washington Monument
I could see the big pool, and I remembered I had seen it in few movies. That was the World War II memorial. This was the most beautiful place I have seen in Washington, a big pool where you can see reflection of Lincoln Memorial as well as Washington Memorial (from two different sides).
World War II Memorial
I did not have much time, so I moved to Lincoln memorial. This was a very beautiful place too. Over so many years, I have read a lot of Lincoln stories and that was main reason this place holds a lot of importance for me. I wanted to stay more and then go ahead towards Potomac River, but all my friends have already reached White house. So I started back.
View of Lincoln View from WW II Memorial
Taking a perpendicular path to what I have been taking all day, we can easily reach White House – home of the most powerful person on earth. I had expected a lot of security, but there wasn’t any (visible to me). It was pretty crowded place and everyone was busy taking a snap in front of White House.
White House
I clicked few more pictures of surrounding area and then we stared walking toward Metro Station. From Metro we went to Du Pont Circle, we met a friend’s relative there and went with them for dinner. India Heritage is the name of the place, after a long time I had great quality Indian food. As everyone would expect a lot of Indians in that restaurant, it wasn’t the case, the place was full of Americans.
Du Pont Circle
Around 9:30 we finished our dinner, we started back for our place to stay (back to Virginia State). It took us about 90 mins to reach back. We were so tired, but still interacted with new friends, copied photos to laptop(Yeah, I had finished 1 GB of quota on my camera) and then slept like a log.
Next morning, everyone was tired and didn’t want to go anyplace to early. Once again it was Rahul and I who planned to leave. We went to the Zoo (Washington Zoo Photoset) and to our surprise we met Tania and Vuko. We weren’t lucky to see many animals but could catch glimpses of Giant Panda, Elephant, Hippopotamus and few more animals on the way. Our aim was 11:30 show of feeding of Giant Octopus. When we reached that place we found out that, Octopus wasn’t hungry and was hiding behind a rock. After a long wait, it came out but I was surprised to find out that octopus was not as giant as I had thought. We were discussing same but that time a volunteer told us that this was a baby octopus, now we could imagine how big the adult would be. [Interesting piece of info, Octopus are usually named after the place where they are born, this one was called Vancouver].
We saw few more animals (Tigers, Deer, Crocodile) and then planned to move out, but then we saw Orangutan in action. It was jumping across cages, walking on the ropes and was very mobile. Was great fun watching it. We rested for another half an hour and then left the zoo. We had planned to go to Madam Tussaud’s museum too, but did not have time.
Reached back West falls church by 1:30, had lunch at Subway and started back for VT. Return journey was fun too, played few games and slept. Overall it was an excellent trip. Thanks to GSA, specially Lindsay and Krishna without whom it wouldn’t have been possible.
This trip is over, I hope over the period of two years I would be visiting more places too. Its late now and am feeling sleepy, want to write about the metro system in DC and few more things I noticed but that would be sometime later. (DC Trip Photoset)
