USA, New York, Day 3 - Washington DC, Lincoln Memorial, White House

2nd October This morning I got up early to catch a bus to Washington DC, a day trip.  I woke up around 5am and intended to catch the 8 am megabus which would've taken us into DC close to 12:30pm.  My friend M wasn't too enthusiastic about waking up that early, so we didn't leave the hostel until after 7am.  I spoke to some chick in the hostel kitchen who had a lego keychain.  Turns out she has some Swedish boyfriend who plays video games, and she's waiting to move there, apparently waiting for some visa or something.  I'm not sure.  But yeah, the Scandinavian aura definitely follows me somehow.  Anyway we arrived shortly after 8am and didn't know if there were even seats left, so I opted for the bus that left shortly after 9am and decided to have breakfast first.

The pick up stop was at 34st street so we took the metro to 34st penn station and from there it was a short walk.  I tried to purchase the tickets on M's mobile phone but for some reason it wouldn't accept my credit card.  So we had to pay cash and that cost $10 extra per person.  Moral of the story, always make sure you buy tickets in advance!

Breakfast, at the Skylight Diner, a short walk away from the designated pickup stop.  The food was quite decent.

Skylight Diner.

9ish am  Walked back to the stop and bought out tickets then sat and waited in the bus.  Over the next several hours I slept and mucked around on the WiFi.  Tried to purchase return tickets but that didn't work, so eventually I bought the return tickets using bolt bus.

2pm or so arrived at Union Station.  The weather at DC was unfortunately pretty bad, it was raining non stop all the time we were there.  But we made the best use of it, walking from Union Square to Capital Hill, past the Washington Monument, all the way to Lincoln Memorial, then on the way back past the White House, FBI and other federal buildings.  The entire walk was about 3 hours or so.  Under rain it was pretty terrible, but well I'm not Storm so I can't control the weather.

Capitol Hill.

Washington Monument.

The USDA, one of my customers.

Going to the Lincoln Memorial.

Lincoln Memorial.

Lincoln Memorial, there were a lot of people.

Reflecting pool with Washington monument in the distance.

White house.

NARA (National Archives Records Administration), also a customer.

The FBI.

5pm or so, we were back in Union Station, which was pretty big, there were shops and pretty much everything there, including the Amtrak station.  M had to go get some pants because hers were sort of wet from all the walking under the rain, so we had a pit stop at Victoria's Secret.  I bought some postcards, and then we had dinner at Chipotle.  I also bought a burrito in case I wasn't going to be full.

Rice bowl.  Nom.

Around 6pm or so we went back to the upper floors where the buses were and caught the Bolt bus back to NYC.  We arrived into NYC around 10:30pm and then from there caught the metro back to the hostel.  Eventually we didn't sleep until close to midnight, hanging out on the ground floor.  I had to figure out where the tour operator was and the station to get to.  Yes, I had to get up early again the following day (at 5am!) because I was going to Canada to visit the Niagara Falls.  I was pretty tired after the entire day but looking forward to visiting Canada since I had never been there before.  Unfortunately this meant that today was the last day I would be seeing M until Monday morning.