W a-s-h i-n-g t-o-n, baby D.C.!

What a terrible place! Really, Washington is a ridiculous city. Its this zombie like land full of monolithic buildings covered in masonic references and secrecy. There are thousands and thousands of people, but no one seems to live there. Everyone just commutes to D.C., walks around franticly with stress on their face, and then leaves again, so the streets are empty of anything 'open' by 6pm. It also doesn't help that we got there the day Osama Bin Laden was reported dead.

The city felt shrouded in this blanket of both pride and terror. A high level of security is everywhere, so you always feel guilty of something, and I never felt 'secure' because of it. While walking to see all of the monuments of the wars, everything is presented in a very strange way. Like, surrounding the Washington monument is a lot of very large American flags. Not just one, or four, but like twenty five or more maybe. There presence is very "This is America!" when you look at it, which I guess makes sense but still feels intimidating. So, you walk past the monument, and start with the war memorials. Between the names of those who died are words like "Victory on land, Victory on sea, Victory in air" or "Freedom isn't free", all driving home the messages of war as a necessity. It just made me feel strange looking at it, the words that seem meant to make you feel proud of war, next to the people who actually died for that war to happen.

Well, other than all of that weird stuff, D.C. does have one cool thing - the Smithsonian. A lot of museums fo' free!
Beth and I attended: the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the Native American, the Botanical Gardens, the Air and Space Museum, and probably a couple more. The best one was the Native one, probably because I just like things like that. All were decent, but all were very tiring to be in.

Basically, the best part of D.C. was couchsurfing with some pretty cool people in a pretty cool neighborhood, and leaving.