The Capital

Last Friday I went to Washington, D.C. with some of my family members.

It took us 14 hours to get there (typically a 10 hour journey), as there were some snags on the way. While we got lost in Washington trying to find the hotel, we stumbled upon some areas that really remind me of Little Burgundy/Place-St-Henri/Georges-Vanier area. It just looks really sketchy and it seems theres more of the general sketchyness there than here. From what I understand Washington is really close to Baltimore and Richmond. Apparently Baltimore has lots of violence. So that could be one of the reasons for the sketchy feel.

On Sunday, my cousin, her boyfriend and I ventured into the city for a short sightseeing excursion in the touristy areas. It's a standard capital city (though keep in mind, my only references are Ottawa and Quebec City). But, they look generally pretty, nice to check out once and then there's not much to do after. We saw the White House, Capital Hill, the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial as they're all in the same area. We passed by an FBI building too.






Their subway - also called the metro, is probably one of the best subway experiences I've had in North America apart from Montreal's. Their fare is inexpensive (1 round trip ticket was 1.38$), it's clean and doesn't require going outside to switch train directions. You simply, either walk across (like at lionel groulx) or you go up the stairs and go on the other side (like other stations). Their trains are air conditioned, which is always a plus (we don't have that yet) and there's not much noise. My only complaints are that the stations are open (the weather can get in) and the seating arrangements on the train don't provide much standing space/maneuverability (remember when the low platform buses first arrived and it was just rows of double seats? yeah, like that. Then everyone complained and we changed it).

People seem generally friendly. People in the US seem to really practice premium customer service because everyone always asks "how's your day", and room service knows your name when you call. The accent is interesting...I would say, from this, I can see the progression of accents from Northern US to Southern US. I've been to New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Oklahoma and now Washington. It seems that the further south you go, the more twang there is in words and the longer the syllables get. The only addition I have to make is to Boston, where yeah, they do that, but they also add r's at the end of words and remove r's where they're supposed to stay.
e.g. "Brenda put the sofa in the car" becomes "Brender put the sofer in the cah"

The best part of Washington was probably my 3 minute carousel ride and generally chilling with my cousin. I was the only adult on the carousel that was not a parent. It was still fun though :)