USA trip 2016 pt 7
15/12/2016 Boston -> Washington DC
Just missed the Aquarium blue line train by the time we bought new tickets so we walked to State St orange line station in the -4C crisp windy morning air! One station to Downtown Crossing then one stop down red line to South Station. Checked with Amtrak that our eticket is sufficient, grabbed some food to take on the train, and got aboard when called. Nice distance train similar to the XPT in Australia.
Stops at Back Bay, ?, ?, Providence RI, Kingston RI, New London CT, New Haven CT, Bridgeport CT, Stamford CT, New Rochelle NY?, New York Penn station, Newark NJ, Philadelphia PA, Wilmington Delaware, Baltimore MD, BWO Thurgood Marshall Airport MD, New Carrollton MD and finally Washington DC.
We had a seat together but that meant being at the end of the carriage next to the door so frequent cold air blasts. I have developed cold/runny nose in the last day or so. Fun fun. On arrival into Union Square in DC we met up with Dave H, an ex-UTas student now at NASA. Had a nice pub dinner near his place, was great to catch up :)
Got to the hotel round 11pm, it was -7 outside, so very cold. Nice warm room, maybe I'll feel less sniffly in the morning?
16-18/12/2016 Washington DC -> LAX -> Sydney -> Canberra
I don't feel less sniffly, and I think I might have given it to Arwin :(
Arwin went over the road to Crystal City shops and got us some breaky to have in the room. We don't fly out till this evening so going to head into town and see if I can spend my Macy's voucher and we'll go to the Udver-Hazy air and space museum to see the planes. Not really sure how transport will work, there doesn't seem to be a convenient way to get to Dulles but we'll work something out.
Left our bags at the hotel and walked up to Pentagon City Fashion Centre and got me some eye liner and Arwin some gloves (he lost his yesterday). Arwin also visited the Microsoft shop and tried out the HTC Vive, which is meant to be the best VR system to date. Sounds fun :)
Lunch in the food court, trying some US mac’n’cheese. Side order because anything else will be too enormous. Was good in the quantity I had!
We decided to catch one last train so caught the Metro from Pentagon City back to Crystal City (1 stop!), and ordered a car to the air and space museum with ride sharing scheme Lyft which we'd acquired $50 vouchers for first time customers. There was a lot of confusion with the car as when it showed up he said it wasn't for us and our order had been cancelled, eventually he decided to take us (after leaving and coming back), but apparently there's some issue with non-US credit cards (even though Arwin signed up using paypal), and the car didn't have credit facilities and we didn't have cash on us. So we decided to rebook the car just so it was in the system, but then it rejected Arwin's voucher claim, presumably because then he wasn't a new user… argh! Anyway eventually things just all magically worked and the driver got paid and we got to the Udver-Hazy centre. It was *amazing*. So many aircraft, including some very famous ones, the SR71 Blackbird, the Space Shuttle Discovery, Concorde… was great although we had nowhere near enough time there. There is a shuttle bus service to the airport so when we found out the timing of that we retrieved our stuff from the locker and I took one last dive into the gift shop for 5 min to get remaining presents.
Small panorama of Space Shuttle Discovery
180 degree panorama of Smithsonian Air & Space Museum Udver-Hazy Centre
Managed to catch the bus, got to the airport and check in was uneventful. Bags checked through to Sydney so that reduces the LA short transit stress somewhat. Again fully screened through security but hey. Flight to LA was 6 hours of boring and a patch of yucky turbulence toward LA.
On landing in LAX they let the back two rows of the plane get off first as we all had to get on planes to Australia. That was a bit difficult given how selfish everyone is about getting off planes. And just to make things worse a little girl realised she'd left her book in the seat and panicked and went back. Oh dear. I hope they made their flight.
LAX was a seriously traumatic airport experience. There were virtually no signs indicating directions - we found our way back to the international terminal by retracing our steps of 2 weeks earlier, thank goodness we'd been there before and had directions from the Australian check in staff then! So we made our way to what was hopefully the right terminal, going through a random screening point where our passports were checked but not stamped. There was a distinct lack of departure boards so we couldn't work out even remotely where we were meant to be. Eventually we all but stumbled on it, gate 133, and they'd already commenced boarding. Very stressful time but at least we found our plane before it left!! Sat in the aisle and next to it on the right seats in row 46, about 4 from the back. 15 hour flight, long and boring, I managed to mostly not be too stressed. Tried to sleep, listened to the Reubens album on repeat. Got a couple of full hours of sleep and dozed a fair bit. Was very very good to arrive back in Sydney airport. Was much less good to get my bag from the carousel and discover the US TSA had broken into it, nicked my lock and left a note. Apparently this is A Thing... thans America. I love Australia. Was able to alter my bus booking without issue even though my ticket wasn't flexi, so that was great, and housemate Stu came and picked us up from the bus terminal. Good to be home. I love my puppy :)
