"A Tale of Two Cities" DC/Florida September 2016 - Day 3 (Arlington Cemetery & Capitol Hill)

[soraia]

Day 2 is here.

"A Tale of Two Cities" DC/Florida
Day 3 - Monday 5th September 2016 (Labour Day)

I woke up at 05:45 and then dozed until about 06:15.

Today we were going to Arlington Cemetery. We met in the lobby at 08:30 and headed to Starbucks first to grab a quick breakfast – skinny hazelnut latte and a croissant. There was a very rude and racist man in there having a loud rant about green cards and it was all very strange!

We got an uber to Arlington Cemetery and decided to do the trolley tour.

It's a very harrowing place, 400,000+ graves but it's very serene and the tour is tastefully done. We saw JFK's grave and also the changing of the guard who watches over the tomb of the unknown soldier which was a very elaborate affair.

It was really hot today and I was struggling a bit with energy levels. I just felt really tired. After a bit of a sit down we headed over to the Robert E. Lee memorial and there were some wonderful views of Washington DC from here.

After Arlington Cemetery we got an uber and headed for lunch to a place that had been recommended to me called We The Pizza. Very simple small place that I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise but my goodness the pizza was good!

When we first got there hilarity ensued and there were clearly communication issues at the till. I went up seperately to Bernie & Tig and wanted to order a pineapple soda but was told they were out so I ordered a grape soda instead. I then spoke to Bernie who said he wanted to order a grape soda but had been told they were out and was offered a pineapple soda instead! I ended up giving my grape soda to Bernie. I don't know what was going on at the tills though!

The pizza more than made up for it though. You choose it by the slice and I went for the white pizza and meat pizza. The slices were enormous!

We all thoroughly enjoyed them though!

They were playing some great 80's tunes in there so we were eating whilst singing along to power ballads and wham. Oh yes!

After lunch we walked over to the Library of Congress which is a beautiful building!

We then took the underpass over to the Capitol and spent some time in there. Learned so much!

Bernie wanted to visit the Supreme Court (he is a lawyer) but sadly it was closed due to it being labour day. We decided to walk over to Union Station which is another lovely building.

There was a Shake Shack in there so we thought we would sit down for a little while, rest our feet and cool down with a nice milkshake. That was the plan anyway! To continue our weird luck with drinks in restaurants today, Bernie & I went up to the till separately again. I went up first and ordered a salted caramel shake with no problems. Then Bernie & Tig went up and were told that they were out of most of their shakes. Pretty much the only option was chocolate or strawberry so they went for a strawberry shake for Tig and a sundae for Bernie. We laughed about how we were told different things again! They got their order first and ended up getting a chocolate shake (which they didn't order) and a chocolate sundae (which they didn't order!) Bernie had enough by this point and didn't want to go up and have another conversation with them so just had his chocolate sundae but Tig did and eventually got a different milkshake. He said it wasn't strawberry but he couldn't figure out exactly what it was. I waited and waited and eventually got fed up and went to speak to someone who said they were now out of all of their shakes and offered me a refund! It was such a bizarre experience! It was definitely more shack than shake in this instance...

I was knackered at this point so got an uber back to the hotel whilst Bernie & Tig went for a walk. We agreed to meet at 19:00 in the lobby for dinner.

Dinner tonight was Ping Pong dim sum in Chinatown. I'm a big fan of Ping Pong in London and we all love dim sum so I thought this would be a no brainer. Sadly it ended up being a little style over substance, but it wasn't a bad meal by any means! We all got a bunch of different dim sum to share.

Bernie & I also got this fancy tea that had a flower in it that opened up as you drink it. Beautiful but also a little bit freaky!

At least our server was sweet and we didn't have any repeats of today's earlier drinks issues!

After dinner we headed back to the hotel and I fell asleep at around 10:30. Finally started getting on to US time by this point!

No bad selfie of the day today – clearly I was so traumatised by yesterday's efforts that I didn't even bother...

Step count: 15,890

Day 4 is here.