So I’ve been out here in DC for about 6 weeks now. Everything is going pretty well, except for the weather, which I could never get used to. It’s so hot and humid. But I love my internship a lot and (besides the fact that I wish I was getting paid…) I could do it for a lot longer than 9 weeks. The first couple weeks out here were kind of boring, mainly because I don’t know anybody and didn’t have anything to do. But the last three weekends, I had visitors! First my parents came and we did all kinds of sightseeing. I didn’t take any pictures with them because my mom and dad did an awesome job with that (mom posted her pictures on her Facebook).
The weekend after that Shannon came! We had a fun time. She got to DC at like 11 pm and we left the next morning around 8 am to go get on a super cool double decker bus that would take us to New York City. It was about a 4.5-5 hour ride and when we got there we were sort of lost. We at lunch at Pret a Manger (YUM) and then found a Borders where we bought a map of the city. And then we wandered around until we realized we weren’t going to just magically know how to take the subway or where we needed to go (even with the map), so Shannon called Sam (expert on all things about The City) and he told us how to use the subway. Somehow it seemed a lot harder there than here. We made our way down to the WTC area because we wanted to see the 9/11 memorial but apparently it isn’t finished yet? I don’t know how we didn’t know that…so we wandered some more and found the Irish Hunger Memorial which was actually pretty cool.
And then we walked. And we walked. And we walked. All the way to Grand Central Station. GoogleMaps tells me this is almost 4 miles. No wonder we were exhausted. We ate delicious pizza with Sam and his sister and friends (?) then slept like little babies at Sam’s parent’s house. At least I did anyway. The next morning we set out for the purpose of our little jaunt to NYC: to see the Harry Potter exhibit at Times Square!
Sadly we couldn’t take pictures in the exhibit, but it was really cool. It was fully of props and costumes and other set pieces from all of the Harry Potter movies, which were so neat to see up close. They had certain areas set up so you felt like you were actually there (i.e. Hagrid’s hut…you could sit in a really big Hagrid-sized chair) and some interactives that were fun to play with (like pulling screeching baby mandrakes out of their pots…it was awesome). Overall I’d say it was worth the $25 we paid for each ticket – especially if you’re as big of a HP fan as we are.
After the exhibit we walked to Central Park where we got hot dogs and soft pretzels that weren’t very good. Oh well. We watched some guys do parkour and some people sing and play guitars and generally enjoyed the park, which was really pretty. Then we went to the American Museum of Natural History, which I have to say – after being in so many mega-museums like that one, it just didn’t seem all that impressive. They did have a really great dinosaur section, which we probably spent the most time in.
And we saw some other things, like a really big meteor…(I kept making Shannon pose with things – I’m going to be the most annoying parent, haha)
And then we left because we were hungry for dinner and our bus back to DC was leaving soonish. Overall it was a pretty fun time. Shannon stayed in DC with me for another day before heading back up to Connecticut. We went down to the Mall and went to the American History and Natural History Museums (along with seeing the Capitoline Venus at the National Gallery). Fun times had by all. We thought about trying to get some tourist to buy us ice cream, but it didn’t work out.
Anyway. I’m glad Shannon (and my parents, even though I didn’t write about their trip really) came to visit! Thank you guys!!
Eric came out to visit the next weekend (July 4th), but that’s the next post…
