2019-01-03 Washington DC

Washington DC was recommended to us by friends so I didn't really know what to expect. It was really cool, and pleasant surprise after NYC. Spacious (!), clean (!), modern (!), all unexpectedly welcome.

Initial Impressions

Subways were super modern. Spacious and actually has a modern ticketing system that is similar to our Smartriders.

(Smithsonian) museums were all free.

Dockless rideshare everywhere! There are bikes and electric scooters all over the city, and you can pick up any of them and drop them off anywhere. Its amazing, and such an improvement over the old fashioned docked system. It means that you can redistribute the scooters and bikes organically based on usage!

One note is that Lyft electric scooters require a scan of the barcode of your (American) driver's license to be able to use it. Us filthy foreigners have no such luxury. Luckily Lime (a competitor) does not require a check of your driver's license.

Be careful with electric scooters! I've injured myself countless times on them. Just picking up the scooter the handle when moving at high speeds (or not) will cause the base of the scooter to swing around and aggressively karate chop your ankles. Small ruts and grouting, tiny pebbles or slightly wet surfaces will cause your scooter to skid out of control!

Everyone seems more friendly in DC. It could be my imagination, or maybe its just the stark contrast of the friendliness level of our previous city, New York City.

Lyft is mysteriously cheaper here. A LyftPool to our AirBnB will cost us only about 9USD. No idea why. Maybe its subsidised somehow?

Some negatives

A few major disappointments during our stay here.

First, the government shutdown began when we were here. All the government buildings and services have stopped! No parks, no museums, nothing. Which is kind of the entire point of going to Washington DC.

On shutdown day we couldn't really do anything at the museums anymore so we visited the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.

Secondly, new years day at Ted's Bulletin (a restaurant). It was paaaaacked. Way more than normal. We grab a ticket, get told our wait is 25 minutes. Fair enough. Ask again for an update 25 minutes later, get told the way is 35 minutes. Fair... enough. Ask again for another update 35 minutes later, get told there's still another 35 minutes to go! At this point we just gave up and left. What a waste of time... Meanwhile all the restaurants next door had zero wait.

Some positives

We only managed to visit the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. It was pretty amazing, and I say this as someone who never cares about museums. I guess this is what happens when you have a gigantic budget behind a museum as opposed to the anemic ones you have elsewhere.

We also checked out the White house! By "checked out" I really just rode an electric scooter to the perimeter then took a photo. The visitor's office was closed due to the shutdown so we couldn't actually visit.

It was so empty in DC. I wonder if its because its New Years, or because I'm just used to New York City.

Photodump!

Weather wasn't too bad here.

Lunch. That weird mash potato thing is called grit.

More food. We ate here after waiting 2 hours (!) at the other place.

We visited the Smithsonian Natural History Museum before the shutdown kicked in.

The museum was actually pretty awesome. Probably the best museum I've been to so far (not many since I don't like museums)

Safeway logos are red here for some reason.

American sized chips!

I've heard of these but have never seen them before in real life. Such a privilege!

You can get all sorts of wacky soda flavours here. Its a dream come true!

Lots of anti trump vandalism can be seen around the city.

The houses are like squashed townhouses, which remind me of the ones in Amsterdam.

They're jam packed together with no space in-between!

The subway is enormous! Modern and clean too.

Every single building looks epic.

Electric scooters for dockless rideshare! We couldn't use these ones, but the lime ones worked.

The crosswalk timers are insanely long here. The longest I saw was a 2 minute countdown! People must walk slowly here.

The streets are named very logically here. This axis of streets are numbers, and the perpendicular streets are letters.

This insane drink fountain at five guys. Each of these buttons open up into a submenu of about 5 choices, which then open up into another menu of five choices!

Burgers from Five Guys. I bought the smallest everything yet the servings were still gigantic.

Everything is closed now :(

Here's the space museum from outside.

Another museum closed. Modern Art museum I think this was.

One sculpture was outside the museum so here it is.

Washington Monument is closed for repairs! Indefinitely too, that's kinda lame. They should be able to make estimates.

At least the WW2 memorial was open.

There are two sides to the oval. Atlantic...

... And Pacific.

Thank god for my electric scooter, walking the full distance would've killed my legs!

Here is the Lincoln Memorial.

The statue itself.

There are quotes from famous speeches on both sides.

The other one.

Tourists can be seen making goofy poses.

Here's a hotel owned by some random dude.

Random epic building that connects to the subway. Everything looks like this here!

The White House! Its smaller than I imagined. We couldn't get any closer because... you guessed it! Government Shutdown!

The Capitol building can be seen in the distance.

Subway entrance back to my AirBnB. Dupont Circle.

Here's what it looks like from the top of the escalator. Its a really nice place! Everything is so orderly.