Weekend Trip to Washington DC, Day 1 on July 30th, 2016

The second weekend in US at my discretion, as I was planning somewhere different than New York to spend the weekend.
I was basically choosing between Boston and DC, as I lived in Ithaca and needed to travel to New York first to visit places. The result is that, prices of Greyhound helped me decide on DC.

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So I departed Ithaca on Friday afternoon at 6 pm. The Shortline bus seemed to experience some delays at CC Lot, so my friend and I waited at Baker’s Flagpole for an extra 20 minutes while listening to the bells chiming 6 o’clock, followed by, quite to my surprise, Music of the Night. There must be a dedicated musician up there in Cornell’s Bell Tower.

Maybe people don’t prefer to arrive at midnight (except doing connection like us), as the 6pm bus to New York was much less crowded as the 1am bus last week.

We arrived at Port Authority Bus Terminal at 2345, and found our Greyhound gate at underground level. To say a few things about Greyhound at Port Authority, it seemed that they leased the entire B1 floor from Port Authority, which meant Greyhound would employ their own cleaners, which meant there would not be one. Also absent were chairs for people to sit in, as I recalled about seeing 20 or so seats in the whole B1 floor, with 200+ people stand waiting. That’s the prefect receipt for turning a bus terminal into a ghetto, as I found myself descending from the ground floor of Manhattan transportation hub to the B1 floor of Bronx slum.

And Greyhound certainly has their way of turning their customer experience to a visit to the refugee camp. It’s the year of 2016, but Greyhound seemed to have no idea of how many tickets they have sold for one trip. To be fair, neither did Shortline on their Ithaca-New York service, however Shortline made sure there were always an abundance of seats left. It was a Friday night as there were lots of people traveling, and it wasn’t until boarding time that the ground crew of Greyhound found there were too many people for one bus, as they subsequently scrambled to find a bus and a driver, hopefully before people got mad and yelled at them. Actually, this happened to our 0130 bus to Washington, and the 0100 bus before us also heading to Washington, and presumably many buses before us, as we were stranded in line and kept uninformed till 0200, when the Greyhound agent made a robotic apology saying they were trying to find a bus for us. Oh did I mention how dirty the Greyhound cleaners managed to keep the terminal floors? So my friend and I stood on our feet till 0300, where a supplement bus (not Greyhound) arrived for the 0100 service and we jumped on board.

For a moment, I thought this would be my first and last time with Greyhound. I killed that thought realizing that I had bought return tickets.

We arrived at Washington Union Station at 0700, which was an hour late. To be honest, for me, 0600 and 0700 didn’t make that much difference, as both times were pretty “early” given how the attractions and museums in DC operates. But given how Greyhound managed their New York bus station, how disorganized their service schedules were, I’m not sure whether I would choose them again.

So, that’s enough for the miserable Greyhound experience, as we finally arrived at Washington Union Station.

The Union Station Bus Terminal was actually part of the parking lot, right above rail lines. We walked past the train station part, and began our two-day roam of Washington DC.

Since it’s a Saturday morning, where the senators and congressmen were all at home, we could walk among their office buildings unhindered. I didn’t think we could do the same on workdays.

Maybe 7am was really too early for DC (not the same for New York), as there were more police officers than tourists before Supreme Court (3 to the 2 of us).

Also, the situation was the same before US Capitol, as we were the only two tourists at the time. There were some early-rise construction workers though, guess Congress really wanted the renovation at Capitol to be finished promptly.

Then we started walking towards Washington Monument, where the day’s tickets would be distributed starting at 0830.

We arrived at Washington Monument at exactly 0830, however, there was already a line waiting for the tickets. We waited for about half an hour, and got tickets for 1130. The thing that saddened me a little bit was that, I found the line dwindled as we waited. They say the whole point of waiting in line is to watch the line grow behind you, well, that’s not the case that day.
So to kill the time, we decided to have a look at the White House, and finished our lunch breakfast in a nearby McDonald’s.

There was a crowd of visitors gathering outside the White House taking photos, both its north lawn and its south, but it was never too many people to find a good clean shot. Another reminder how glad I left China behind.

I thought last time I saw steam coming out of manholes was in Watchdogs, where I took it no more serious than another hackable object. Having seen it in real life and after five minutes of Googling, I took that as a sign of an aging infrastructure, as heat was leaked from the steam pipes.
This was near the McDonald’s where we had our lunch breakfast. I had to say the McDonald’s in DC offer fabulous McPicks, that is, only after 11am when the breakfast hours end.
Yes, I always equate breakfast hours with “closed” for McDonald’s.

After our lunch breakfast, we headed back to Washington Monument, stopping by White House South Lawn and WWII Memorial so that we wouldn’t arrive too early.

The tours at Washington Monument was running with a bit delay, as we entered the monument at 1145 among the first of 1130 ticket holders (presumably due to visitors lingering longer than expected).
Washington Monument’s hollow structure allows elevator access. The tour guide told us that in the early days the elevator was steam-powered, as it took 12 minutes to haul a carful of people to the top.

I set a flag here, the panoramas from Washington Monument were processed differently than conventional photos, and not uploaded for the time being.

Then there was the journey down. It caught my surprise that the elevator slowed down twice during descent, as we could see through the tribute stones on the interior of Washington Monument.
Piece of advice, pick the west side door of the elevator (the door that you entered through), as the tribute stones there were better-looking.

Then, given the weather forecast of imminent showers, we decided to spend our afternoon in museums. We each picked one museums, that’s National Air and Space Museum of me and National Gallery of Art of my friend.

Then we decided to take a break for something different, walked across the street and visited National Gallery of Art.

The collections there were marvelous, perhaps less pleasing was the Gallery’s rule that backpacks shall be on only one shoulder. I know this was introduced so that backpacks don’t unattendedly slam on displays. It wasn’t a very nice experience trying to balance the souring feel of my two shoulders carrying a not-so-light backpack.

Given the time we had our breakfast lunch first meal of the day, we were starving by that time. We found a good restaurant called Grand Truck that serves fast food, that’s located not far from National Gallery of Art, that’s well decorated and above all, reasonably priced. Although, I’m not totally sure what I ordered.

Then we reentered National Gallery of Art.

Half an hour and lots of oil paintings later, it was closing time for the National Gallery of Art, as we moved across the street back to National Air and Space Museum.

I guess the museum deliberately staged the terrorist-looking combat uniform of USSR next to the Suit and Tie of USA, while the equally-ugly combat suit of USA was displayed on a different floor.

Having visited all the pavilions of National Air and Space Museum, we decided to call it a day. It then started to rain, as we walked back to our Airbnb host near Union Station, calling at a McDonald's for dinner. We tried to race cumulonimbus, and failed, as we watched a drizzle turned into a downpour. Since it rained for quite long, no night activities.

END