Washington DC

Second stop on my journey through American east coast cities was the nations capital, Washington DC.

I've stayed here at the Caravan Hostel located just under an hour walk from the White House, Capitol and many museums located in the area.

On my first short walkthrough I went by the Capitol, White House and bought my breakfast supplies in Whole Food Market for the next few days.

Second day started with a guided tour through the Capitol after which I went next door to the Library of Congress which had few interesting exhibitions, most notably "Two George's" highlighting the two opposing leaders George Washington and George III.

After a short walk though U.S. Botanic Garden, I've visited the National Gallery of Art which hosted paintings by Van Gogh, Monet, DaVinci, Dali and Bacon. I could easily spend there the whole day as it was huge with separate exhibitions of sculpture, furniture and modern art.

On my way back to hostel I accidentally stumbled upon Ford's Theatre where Abraham Lincoln has been assassinated and managed to get on the last self guided tour through a museum, theatre itself and a house on the other side of the road where Lincoln died. The house has subsequently been bought by US government and transformed into a museum.

I've started my third day in DC by walking to Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King Jr. had his famous speech. Next stop was an amazingly designed and very interesting African American History and Culture Museum where I spend quite a long time going through the sports and music sections.

Next two museum (surprisingly) did not sparkle as much of my interest: American History Museum and Natural History Museum were both quite outdated and I spend about half an hour in each of them. It is worth mentioning that almost all of the museums in DC were free to visit with few requiring a ticket booking beforehand.

My final stop for the day was an exquisite Holocaust Museum, this was in hindsight my favourite museum I visited in Washington. It has been designed in thoughtful linear fashion where you would follow journey of the prisoners to the camps, learn how Nazis gained power and see how America has perceived the whole situation at the time.

Fourth day started by queuing up to get a ticket to very popular Washington Monument, it had limited capacity and only a handful of people could ride an elevator up to the best view Washington DC had to offer. It was worth waking up at 6 AM to get the ticket indeed. My next stop was the American Indian Museum where you could learn all the misfortunes that fell upon Native Americans from the hands of their new neighbours and see and buy interesting art work created by the tribes.

After that I paid a short visit to surprisingly interesting Postal Museum located just by the Union Station where I learned about Owney a mascot of the Mail Service who traveled all around America by mail rail and later got preserved by taxidermy and was currently shown at the museum.

My last stop was very popular with tourists Air and Space Museum, it was quite difficult to obtain the free tickets here and I would book it beforehand if I knew that would be the case. Exhibitions included the space travel, Wrights Brothers inventions, breaking speed limits and various airplanes you could explore inside. It was well executed and kids were loving it.

This attraction concluded my visit to Washington, following morning I left from the Union Station by the Peter Pan coach to Philadelphia.