We took an Amtrak from Penn Station and prior to the train ride, which I knew was going to be about 3 hours long, I decided to give Dunkin Donuts another chance and got a cup of coffee and a box of Donut Holes.
This time, the coffee wasn't a latte like my last 2 orders, instead it was a brewed coffee with creamer and sugar and it wasn't good at all. It was even more bitter than my last cup, the after taste was just not great and I drank only about 50% of it on the train, donuts were just donuts, 5 of it were regular glazed donuts holes while another 5 was the chocolate variant. I really do not like Chocolate Donuts, I just don't like the consistency, so I didn't actually finish the donut holes.
Shout out to the counter guys at Dunkin Donuts also, I accidentally gave him 3 twenty dollar bill instead of 3 dollar bills and he was very honest about it, another customer who was making his order beside me also said I was lucky that the cashier was so honest about it. American notes are just confusing because they are all in the same colour, and I really wouldn't have know if I overpaid for my donuts because I was not keeping track of my spending, which was horrible, for all I know, I might have given out wrong bills multiple times, but only the Dunkin Donuts cashier was honest enough to return the excess to me.
Anyways, my Sister and I got lunch from Pret-A-Manger, or more specifically, I made sure to buy enough to feed myself a light lunch and all my sister got was a small grain bowl.
The ride was pretty pleasant, the seats were of a comfortable size and the journey was smooth. Another reason why I didn't finish the coffee was also because I tend to get the runs after drinking coffee and I didn't want to risk having to visit the toilet on the train, read online that it's pretty nasty.
Reach Union Station about 3 hours later and it doesn't smell like piss, the architecture was pretty impressive.
I mean the ceiling of the station looks like this, I was definitely not in a New York train station anymore.
The Washington Capitol Building greeted us from a distance once we exited the station. The place was pretty full, everyone was just fumbling around and so were me and my sister, she called an Uber and it took a while to locate said Uber because of the sheer number of vehicles that were just coming and going.
We did eventually find our Uber and made our way to the Hotel, did all the check-ins and even though the hotel room was much bigger, the ceilings were a little too low for me and it felt a little claustrophobic.
The views from our hotel room
During our unpacking, I got an alert on my phone that there was a tornado warning, my sister's phone started buzzing too and then a huge storm appeared and it was pretty intense, the warnings were urging everyone to stay indoors until 4.15 pm, but my Sister kept insisting that the storm looked like a regular heavy shower back in Singapore, and kept wanting to leave the hotel at 4.00 pm because she was hungry, which was just shocking for me that she was suddenly not making sound decisions.
Luckily when we actually left the hotel, the storm had subsided, so we headed to the closest subway which was just across the street and got ourselves new Metro Cards, then took a bus to Ben's Chili Bowl shop and had Chilis.
It was a pretty good, I had Chili Cheese Fries and my sister just got a bowl of Chilis.
After that, we walked around a bit and explored a few of the landmarks on our own.
We visited the White House, there was a protest that was happening outside about kidnapped children, it was a small group of protesters just walking around in circles, holding signs and chanting something about returning lost kids to us or something.
I found this building to be pretty impressive looking, in fact, all the buildings in the Washington Mall are very impressive looking, there are no skyscrapers in Washington, all the buildings are pretty low compared to the Big Apple.
And it was bloody hot, once again, not a humid country so I didn't actually sweat at all, but my face got really disgustingly oily, my nose was glistening in the Sun, it was gross.
The roads were also cordoned off for some reason, so there were areas where the traffic lights really didn't matter, and when me and my sister were about to cross one that was near the White House, it so happened that a car was heading out, I kinda alerted my Sister and we stopped rather abruptly, the driver sees us and ushers us to move ahead, and when both me and my Sister were finally across, she suddenly turns to me and goes...
"OMG, that is Kellyanne Conway."
... and proceeds to sneakily video tape her while she (Kellyanne) was waiting for the traffic lights to turn green.
My sister later googles Kellyanne Conway and confirms that the driver who gave way for us to cross was indeed Kellyanne Conway because she was wearing the same blue blouse she wore that day to give a speech at the White House.
3rd famous person we saw after Stephen Colbert and Julianna Margulies, the latter was a guest on Stephen Colbert Show. It was pretty cool, I mean I was hoping to see at least 1 famous person during the trip but I managed to catch 3, even though the 3rd one is more infamous than famous.
For dinner, the original plan was to visit Cheesecake Factory, so we took the train there and the subway stations are so clean compared to NY, it looked like a set straight out of a Christopher Nolan film.
Unfortunately when we did finally reach the place, Cheesecake Factory was closed because of a power outage, in fact, quite a few stores there were close due to a power outage, I assume it must have been caused by the tornado earlier.
There wasn't much option available at where we were at, so we just went to a nearby convenience store and got a few snacks, I bought half a dozen cans of La Croix and we headed back to the hotel to rest for the day.
We went to a nearby Cosi to get some Salad for dinner and it was pretty good, perfect pairing with my LaCroix, its like a healthy meal that white girls would eat because #healthgoals
The next day, we had a segway tour planned, headed to a Panera Bread for breakfast, ordered a cup of hot chocolate and a bacon egg croissant sandwich if I remember correctly and it was a nice breakfast. American Breakfast is really my kind of breakfast, a nice egg and bacon combo will always work for me.
The segway tour itself was alright, we went to a few monuments to look at the buildings, learn a bit about the history behind some of them, the Sun was extremely hot that day and I actually got sun burnt after the segway tour.
The guide was pretty entertaining and she did a good job keeping what could have been a boring topic for me pretty interesting, the segway itself was very fun to ride, looking at all the other visitors having to walk from Point A to Point B and knowing I can just segway to Point B from Point A within a fraction of the time was extremely satisfying and my leg was very thankful for the segway.
We made a few stops every now and then for some photo taking, I was not interested in taking any photos of myself because the lighting was just horrible. Having sunlight shine directly in my face just made me look kinda fat, really accentuates my double chin that doesn't normally exist. One photo exist on my phone, I might use it as a profile pic on Instagram one day, just for shits and giggles.
We segway along the main road, which was really interesting because the bicycle and segway lanes are actually in the middle of the main road, so cars were just passing us by while we were zipping through. No pictures of that because its dangerous to segway and snap, wouldn't want to segway into oncoming traffic.
This was a long stretch of road and flanked on both sides of this pathway were all the Smithsonian Museums, so many people were walking and it is a really really long stretch of road, so I was really thankful that I could rely on my segway.
We visited the Washington Monument, the guide asked if I wanted to take a picture with my Sis and we both turn down the offer because horrible lighting.
Saw the Abraham Lincoln Statue, which was really cool, really crowded as well.
Really nice view of the Washington Monument, this was one of the final legs of the tour, my face was covered in a layer of grease at this point.
After the tour ended and we went back to the Segway Tour shop to return the segways, my sister and I decided to actually visit the Museums, the tour only showed us where the Museums were but never brought us in because it would take way too long to cover every inch of all the Museums.
We decided to split in the Museum of Natural History, so she went to do her stuff and I did mine. I didn't stay very long though, after walking the grounds once and seeing how crowded the museum was, I immediately lost interest, went to the souvenir shop to get a few stuff for my friends and then headed right out.
The goal that day was to drop by Georgetown Cupcakes to get cupcakes from there, but it was lunch time and Georgetown Cupcakes was too far for me, so I scrapped the idea completely and went to milkbar, because I am really predictable.
This time, I made sure to take a photo of the interior, because the queues were pretty long here, unlike the one in the Upper West Side in New York.
Did not get any cookies, but got myself a bagel bomb because lunch and I needed something savory, a cup of milkbar pie iced latte or crack pie latte, not sure why different stores have different names for it, and a chocolate birthday cake. I wanted to get the regular birthday cake but just blurted out chocolate cake when I ordered it, stupid boy.
The bagel bomb was pretty good but it was not enough for lunch, so I did get a chicken noodle soup from Pret-A-Manger near the hotel as an accompaniment, it was a good meal. Not super sure how I feel about the birthday cake frosting though, it was not a texture I was familiar with me.
I lingered in the hotel for a while, didn't really want to explore Washington all that much, so I just waited till my Sis came back from her Museum visits and then we headed off for lunch at Momofuku, which was literally in the same space as Milkbar, I went to the same place twice for lunch and dinner.
I got myself a bowl of Dumpling and it was about 8 USD, which is crazy expensive for 5 pieces of dumpling, it was not bad though.
After this meal, I went to get Gongcha because there is one near the hotel and surprisingly, the prices are the same, so what is $4.50 in Singapore is also $4.50 in American, but in USD, numbers are the same, currency isn't. They were really slow when it came to preparing the drinks, I was waiting for way too long for a cup of bubble tea, there is definitely a difference in drink preparation efficiency.
I actually realize that there is a Bubble Tea shop in New York called Boba Guys that supposedly sells the best Bubble Tea there after I came back to Singapore, so I am really sad that I did not do ample research on it and missed it completely.
That marked the end of the 2nd day in Washington, on the third day, it was time to leave and since we had to check out of the hotel by 10 am, there really wasn't a lot of time to travel to some fancy place for breakfast, so we settled for a cafe nearby called Compass Coffee.
Pretty nice interior, the Sun was just shining in like crazy, it was bloody hot. It is actually a lot warmer in the air-conditioned room than it was outside.
I got myself a cup of Cherry Blossom Cold Brew and Croissant, really fancy stuff, I don't really know why, but I drank a lot of coffee when I was in America, it's like my default drink, I have a cup everyday even though I hardly touch one when I am in Singapore, it's something about the air that makes me want to look like a fancy coffee drinking connoisseur.
Last day was pretty short in Washington, it was less than half a day because by 1.30pm, we were on the Amtrak, on the way back to New York, which I was very happy about, but also extremely sad because that meant that the trip was very soon coming to an end.
I really didn't care that much about Washington, it was honestly a little boring for me, it was a lot cleaner than New York that is for sure, but it's a very political and history rich place, both are topics that do not interest me at all, so it was nice to go for the experience, but I probably won't go back again for a holiday.
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