after i’ve watched Die Hard 4.0 on friday evening together with my turkish dudes (yep, once again…) i decided to do it just like Det. John McClane and drive to Washington DC after being to Camden. well ok, i made this one up, but the truth is i tried the whole week to find some people interested in going to Washington as well. i only had 10 days left, and so time was running out fast. unfortunately i didn’t find anyone to go with me, so i decided on saturday morning to make a solo trip down there.

for those of you not aware of where Washington is located: it’s about 3.5h with the car from Princeton, direction southwest. so i packed my stuff (a very tiny bag) and left 9 Robert Drive at 10.00am. i didn’t do any research on what to visit or where to sleep in advance, but i was confident i’d do well down there.

4 hours later i arrived in Washington and asked my navigation system to guide me to the visitors information center. to my surprise the stupid device claimed “you’ve reached your destination” on the bridge between Washington and Arlington, which kind of brought me in an uncomfortable situation. so i took the next exit, named “Pentagon, Parking North” and wanted to have a look there what to do next. of course i was not able to park my car there (special permit required, although there would have been about 300 empty spots). quick picture, and driving back over the bridge directly to Washington downtown. after parking my car on Constitution Ave i grabbed my camera and ipod and headed to explore the city.

it seemed i’ve chosen the hottest day of the summer for my visit in DC, 38° and incredible high humidity made i nearly impossible to breath. nevertheless i walked around for hours, took pictures and went to the Washington Monument, the White House, the Capitol, the Reflecting Pool and had a look inside Natural History and Air & Space Museum. by the way, all museums in Washington are absolutely free to enter, isn’t that incredible?

well, time was flying by and so it was 6pm and i still had no idea where to sleep. this time, my beloved navigation system was able to help me out of my misery and found me the Quality Inn in Arlington, only 3 miles southwest of Washington’s center. the room as well as the price were ok, so i decided to spend the night there, took a shower and went to Chili’s for dinner.

the next day, i left DC at 10pm, heading to Baltimore (1 hour of driving). again, i was totally unprepared, but i heard from other interns before that the most interesting place to visit there is the inner harbor. now i can say, they were totally right: Baltimore is for sure a nice city, but besides the harbor area there’s nothing really going on down there. i took about 1.5hours to walk around, took again some shots and ate at a harbor restaurant. equipped with a large, hot beverage from Starbucks i finally started the trip home, but not without stopping at my pal Rocky in Philly (has been an incomplete task on my ToDo-list). glad i found time to do this as well, guess it was the last possibility.

to sum up, it was a great weekend, even though i had been there alone. i think i like this adventure-like experiences, and am glad i took the chance to visit these two cities in the south. as usual all the pictures can be found in the gallery.

god bless america, good night.