We went from New York to Washington DC by a Greyhound Bus. It wasn't our preference necessarily - Amtrak run many trains between New York and Washington DC, but they were at least twice as much as the bus. Either bus - for Megabus run buses too, but Greyhound worked out slightly cheaper when you took into account Megabus's extra booking fees and mandatory seat selection (which comes at a price). So Greyhound it was
Accommodation in Washington DC wasn't cheap - in fact the same could be said for a lot of the US really, but we opted to go for a 2-bunk private room in a Hostel booked through one of the accommodation companies we use. When checking in we discovered that they don't have 2-bunk private rooms, but we'd get an entire room of 4 bunk beds to ourselves which didn't bother us - so long as no one else would be in the room. It had a TV in the room but the sound didn't work (we had been warned of this), downstairs was some basic cooking facilities and almost always, there was a guy sitting at the communal computer in the lobby playing tetris. It proved quite adequate - it wasn't anything special, but the room was decently cool and the wifi internet seemed strangely fast!
Washington DC is home to a wide number of National Museums, and the Air and Space one was one that was high on my list. There is a wide range of historically important items on display in this museum - a lot of important aeroplanes, such as the original plane the Wright Brothers flew, the Spirit of St Louis (first plane to fly non-stop from New York to Paris), the Bell X-1 which was the first aircraft to fly at Mach 1 (faster than the speed of sound); and Howard Hughes' H-1 Racer in which the eccentric millionaire set a number of speed records. But primarily I was there for the Space aspect of the Museum.
This is the museum which houses the capsule from Apollo 11, which took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon. It didn't put them on the moon of course - the Lunar Module did that, but half of that is sitting on the Moon where they landed and the other half was thrown away when the astronaut's prepared to land back on Earth in the capsule and it subsequently fell towards earth and burned up. But it has a lot of other important Space flight articles too - the barely-big-enough-to-fit-a-person Mercury capsule Freedom 7, the 3rd Mercury Capsule to go into space and the first to put its Astronaut, John Glenn in orbit; an actual production Lunar Module, LM2 which wasn't used for any Moon Missions; the capsule of Gemini IV, the two-man capsule not much bigger than Mercury and from which Ed White became the first American to walk in space; the engineering prototype for the Hubble Space Telescope plus some parts that have come back down from the Hubble that's in space; the engineering prototype for Skylab; and the Apollo Command Module for Skylab 4, the last mission to Skylab before it was decommissioned and fell to Earth over Australia. Special mention also to SpaceShipOne, the first private space vehicle to take a person into space - it is the prototype for the Virgin Galactic space plane.
All in all - I really enjoyed it and nowhere else can you see so much historic and important air and space stuff all together.
So one thing I absolutely wanted to do while in the US was see a Space Shuttle. Of the 4 remaining Shuttles, 3 of them were on display in cities we were going to - Enterprise in New York, Discovery in Washington DC, and Endeavour in Los Angeles (with Atlantis in Florida). Enterprise is on display on top of the Aircraft Carrier USS Intrepid in New York, except that Museum was costly to go to and Enterprise was a test shuttle - it never went into Space, though the original intention was that it would be converted to space flight. So, if I wanted to see an actual Space Shuttle which had flown in space, that meant Discovery or Endeavour and it sounded a bit like Endeavour wasn't necessarily still on display pending a new display building being built for it. Discovery was the best bet - and it was in Washington at the Air and Space Museum, which we were going to in order to see Apollo 11 anyway.
We went to this museum because it had some trains in it that I wanted to see, but also contained a few other things which I thought might be interesting - such as Abraham Lincoln's hat. Firstly though - those trains. One was John Bull, one of the first steam locomotives in America - built in England to a design that was successful there, it had problems in the US until they modified it - namely giving it a set of carrying wheels in front of the engine to help guide it on the rails, becoming the first "bogie" and becoming a standard feature on most locomotives thereafter; and adding wood at the front to be a "cow catcher". The other two engines were "Jupiter", an American-style early engine which isn't the famous "Jupiter" that opened the Trans-Continental Railroad but another one; and Southern Pacific 1401, a rather large express passenger locomotive - both interesting engines in their own right but not hugely of significance unlike John Bull.
Quite separate to the American History museum is a museum about the American Indians. We ended up in this museum because it was hot outside and we were looking for somewhere to cool off - and there was the promise of watching a 20min movie which meant we could also sit down while cooling off. It didn't really work like that because we arrived at the museum 30mins before close, and the last movie had already begun by the time we got to the closed Theatre doors. We did have a bit of a look around, before we had to leave. One for next time!
Washington is fairly compact as far as US cities seem to go. Its major attractions are all arranged around a big rectangular park, called the National Mall. At one end of the Mall, is the US Capitol Building - where the US Congress and US Senate is located, the actual "parliamentary" functions of the US Government. At the other end is the Lincoln Memorial, which houses the massive statue of Abraham Lincoln. In the "middle" of the Mall between these two buildings (although its a lot closer to the Lincoln Memorial than the US Capitol Building) is the Washington Monument - an Obelisk which is the USA's official national monument. Branching off to one side of the Obelisk away from the Mall is more park, which leads to the White House, the offices and residence of the President (currently Donald Trump) and in the stretch of Mall between the Obelisk and the US Capitol Building, lining each side of the Mall is all the Smithsonian Museums. On our 2nd day in Washington, we did a huge walk all along the Mall, and actually beyond!
We started off by going to the White House - we'd seen the "back" of the White House the day before, but this time we started at the "front". There's a lot of extra fences now, which look recent as it blocks off roads. Now, the bit with the "round" part is actually the back, and the front is "flat". We didn't do a tour, because Trump has stopped foreign nationals from being able to tour the White House due to "security concerns". We knew this ahead of time, but it had been something we'd been wanting to do! Thanks Trump.
At the end of our first full day in Washington DC, we attended a kind of folk festival being held in the Mall. It mostly was celebrating Catalan and Armenian culture (the fact Catalonia was trying to separate from Spain at the time I found interesting), and had food and drink tents offering their typical cuisines as well as demonstrations of various cultural aspects. There was traditional Armenian dancing which didn't look overly interesting, but we finally managed to see some Catalonian people-tower building which was very impressive to watch and see who gets to be hoisted up and who stands where at the base - a very little girl was the top-most participant! There was a kind of concert starting at 6pm, which was of neither of these cultures but an Irish Folk concert where they played various kinds of dittys and they occasionally had some Irish Dancers on stage. A bit eclectic but very entertaining!
We had a range of cuisines while in Washington DC, and not a lot of it was probably very healthy! Our first night there, Sasha had found a list of recommended cheap eats of local kinds of food, and we decided to check out the most prominent of them - Ben's Chilli Bowl, which happened to only be a few blocks away from where we were staying. It was packed out, but somehow we luckily swooped in and got ourselves a table (Sasha's good at that!) and we ordered the Half Smoke Chilli Dog each (their speciality), some chips to share and a soft drink each. It took a long time to come, and there was something wrong with our order when it came but for the life of me right now I can't remember what. Ben's Chili Bowl is apparently a bit of an institution and the restaurant is certainly exactly as it would have been in the 1950's. The presentation standards are still in the 50's too, but how you make chilli mince splopped on top of a hot dog in a hot dog bun look presentable is probably too much of a challenge! The chips had American plastic cheese melted all over the top of them and then some chili splopped on top of that too. It was a bit messy, it was interesting but I can't say it had amazing flavour!
On our Museum Day, we visited one of the many, many food trucks that line up outside the various Museums and we got a box of Cajun Chicken Wings to share. These were meant to be a portion for one person, but the price of all the food was a bit more than we were wanting to pay and so we decided we'd share and if we were still hungry after we'd consider getting something else. There was so many wings - and we struggled to finish it all, one American portion is virtually two "normal" portions! They were very tasty and we were very happy with our choice. Later that day we had some Sangria from the Catalan food stand at the Folk Festival, but elected not to try their expensive Churros. On our big wandering day, we had Taco Bell at the mall - it was nice, the fillings fell out a bit as they always do and we got a meal each that came with 3 different kinds of tacos, as well as chips and a regular soft drink - which anywhere else, is a large! I enjoyed it, it even seemed possibly healthier than other fast food options and I'd have it again - but I wouldn't bust my gut to do so.
We didn't always eat out, and in fact a big part of our Washington DC food story is the Trader Joe's supermarket. Trader Joe's is known as one of the cheapest range of supermarkets, and the prices were indeed quite good by American standards and this one that we kept going to had quite a range of stuff. We loaded up on all manner of foods here for dinners mostly and snacks also, as well as any breakfast food items we might need. They even sold an extensive selection of wines, some at a very reasonable price - we wanted a bottle to have with dinner at our hostel, but they were all cork lids and not screw cap. We had this trouble in Italy but had managed to get by, and I didn't want to finally cave this far in the trip but they had some great corkscrews which had a kind of double-ridged handle meaning you could get a 2nd whack at getting some leverage for the cork, they were the cheapest we'd yet seen and they said Trader Joe's and Sasha reasoned it could be a souvenir. So we caved - only to not be able to buy the bottle of wine, because they didn't accept Foreign driver's licenses at this Trader Joe's and we didn't have our passports on us! But we still came away with the corkscrew!
Summing Up
When all is said and done, I will remember Washington for its neat Museums, its 1960's Sci-Fi like Metro System, the pedestrian crossing buttons which had a different "Wait!" voice to those in New York but also told you what intersection you were crossing at when it was time to cross - "You are crossing at 7th Street and R"!, as well as that long walk to the Pentagon in the heat. But also the folk festival, and just generally having a good time - and a nicer relaxed pace following New York.
Our next destination wasn't even in the US, strangely enough - so we were bidding farewell to the US for a short time, but we'd be back!