USA Holiday 3, October 03 (Catching Hell)

Another early flight on to Chicago. It was going to be a bit of a rush since I had bought tickets for a Chicago Cubs game which I thought was at 3pm - last game of the season, each ticket cost only $1.50, bargain!

I found the hotel in downtown pretty easily, but then had a bit more trouble finding the actual entrance to the hotel. It is in some office building and the hotel only starts from floor 60 or something. There are special elevators that take you straight there, skipping all the lower floors. After check-in I realised I had got the game time wrong since Chicago is on central time instead of eastern. So we had to run across town to get to the train line going to Wrigley Field, and made it just in time for the start of the first innings.

Wrigley Field.

The first pitch.

The game was never going to be a fantastic matchup since the Cubs are pretty poor and they were playing the Houston Astros, the worst team in the league. But there was a few runs scored by each team and a good ballpark venue made it ok. The highlight of the day was when one of the Astros players faceplanted into the dirt trying to reach second base. The worst part of the day though was the high number of vendors walking up and down the aisles all game, screaming out what they were selling. The Cubs won 5-4 in the last innings which was a great way to finish.

The Cubs win.

The lyrics to some fun song when the Cubs (occasionally) win.

It was already early evening by the time we got back to downtown, so just had a walk around The Loop to get an idea of the surroundings, saw some places like Chicago Theatre, Marina City and The Riverwalk.

The Chicago Theatre.

USA Holiday 3, October 02 (The National)

The morning started with a whole lot of rain, I got out of the underground metro and walked for about two minutes before my pants and shoes were soaked. A good tip for a holiday is not to wear Nike Free or other shoes which are not at all water proof or even water resistant, having wet feet all day is not much fun. A fashion trend that a lot of women seem to have adopted is wearing gumboots with business attire. Looks a little bit unusual, but they had some trendy designs on the boots and I guess it couldn't be any worse than wearing high heeled shoes.

The National Museum Of Natural History.

Heads on a stick.

Had to wait out the rain a bit, but still made it over to the Air And Space Museum just before it opened for the day. The best thing about most of the museums in Washington is they are free. That's the kind of price I like.

Probably spent most of the morning looking around, there is a lot of stuff about the history of aeroplanes and space, also some stuff about planets which was not too bad.

Some rockets in the foyer.

Some plane.

A stained glass representation of the light spectrum.

St. Louis Spirits.

Since the rain had died down I was able to walk across to the State Capitol, which also seemed to be undergoing construction. You have to register in advance for tours there anyway, so it didn't matter. While taking my own photos I got called up to take a group photo for about 50 European visitors. The lesson I have learned from this trip is if you have a camera in your hand, there's a good chance people will be asking you to take a photo with their camera too. Maybe if I had an ipad instead, this wouldn't have kept happening... One Asian girl was even trying to teach me how to use the zoom and focus on her SLR. Anyway, to get the whole group in the photo I had to backtrack and ended up right in a puddle. Did not drop the camera though, so that was something.

The State Capital Capitol building.

Came across a self serve frozen yoghurt for lunch! and they had some intriguing flavours. I had some of the Banana Cream, Cake Batter and Cheesecake, I think only one of them was really good but forget which one.

Across the other side of the National Mall was the National Archives building. The main feature in the rotunda is the three documents: Bill Of Rights, Constitution and Declaration Of Independence. They are all incredibly faded and have really crazy writing, so they are almost impossible to read. Some other rooms in the building had some cool exhibits and games and things too. Better than expected.

The National Archives.

Just a quick visit to the National Museum Of Natural History next, because these kind of museums (and aquariums) are often not much different to each other. They did have a very large rocks and minerals collection, including the Hope Diamond. Also some more standard stuff like dinosaurs, and some Ice Age room that was a bit disappointing.

The stuff that prevents tooth decay.

Le bleu de France.

A dinosaur or an elephant perhaps.

This one looks more familiar.

And this one too.

Finally the Holocaust Museum. Only arrived about an hour before closing, so I didn't get to read through everything. But it was a really well presented timeline of the holocaust and didn't seem too biased. You start on the upper floor and work your way through the events as you end up back down at the first floor, probably could have used another hour or two to look at everything.

The Smithsonian Castle.

The National Museum Of American History.

I probably would have liked another day to finish exploring DC, such as Arlington Cemetery, Pentagon and the areas around Chevy Chase, Dupont Circle and Georgetown.

USA Holiday 3, October 01 (The Lone Wanderer)

After two days in Atlanta it was time to pack up for a morning flight to Washington DC. The hotel was actually in Arlington (Virginia) which is about half an hour west of Washington. I was a bit worried about finding my way to the hotel as it wasn't that close to the train station and there was a few freeways around, but it ended up not really being a problem at all.

The first thing I noticed after heading back into Washington was how the train station interiors looked exactly like in the game Fallout 3. It made riding the metro even more fun than normal, if that is even possible. Besides that, I think the metro stations in Washington look cleaner and nicer than any other I can think of.

Fantastic, even though it is pre-post-apocalyptic.

The Department Of Agriculture grow their own corn (?).

After some lunch, I checked out all of the outdoor sights west of the National Mall. Started with the Washington Monument, which is the big obelisk thing. I'm not sure what you can normally do inside, but it was closed for foundation repairs - unless you know the Vice President.

The Washington monument.

Next was the WW2 memorial, followed by the reflecting pool and the Lincoln memorial. Most of the tourists were hanging out by the Lincoln steps. It was pretty cool but The Simpsons episode has lied to me, people were not coming up to Abe Lincoln and asking him questions. I also encountered for the first time, but definitely not the last, people taking pictures not with a camera, or a phone, but with an ipad. I think it just looks kind of weird holding up a big tablet device to take a photo, and it looks rather clumsy when you have the case folded out too.

The White House (more later).

The WW2 memorial.

Also the WW2 memorial.

The reflecting pool and Lincoln monument.

Isn't every pool a reflecting pool?

Abe Lincoln.

Further south was the MLK memorial, which is an outdoor stone statue, as well as the Roosevelt (FDR) memorial which is more like a trail with quotes inscribed on the walls and a few statues. Finally was the Jefferson Memorial, which The Simpsons has got correct this time, because not many people bothered to walk all the way down there.

King.

FDR is in the White House.
An ice cream cone costs a nickel, and a hot new tune by Benny Goodman is hitting the charts.
The year is 1939...

Some eagle.

A date which will live in infamy.

Jefferson.

Having done a full loop I ended up back at the Washington Monument and went over to The White House, or as close as you can get which is the street in front of it. Before heading home for the night I located the Verizon Centre in the hope of finding a Washington Wizards team store. I don't really like the team but I like their team colours and logo so I thought they might have something good, but there did not seem to be any store that I could see.

The White House again.

USA Holiday 3, September 30 (Home Of The Braves)

Went through Piedmont Park in the morning. It's in the northern suburbs of Atlanta which seems to be a lot cleaner and nicer than the areas around downtown.

Lake Clara Meer.

Piedmont Park.

Stopped in at the CNN Center for lunch which was packed with people on their way to the Georgia Dome, where I was headed too. Given the undefeated Atlanta Falcons (3-0) were playing a poor Carolina Panthers (1-2) team it was a remarkably good and high scoring game. The lead jumped back and forth a number of times, before the home team Falcons won with a field goal with only 5 seconds remaining.

Outside the dome, before I walked around the whole stadium to find my gate.

Before the game.

Indoor fireworks are never a bad idea.

Rushing down field on the game winning drive.

Falcons win.

USA Holiday 3, September 29 (Let's Rock)

Started off the first day in Atlanta by jumping on a train and a bus to travel 25km *out* of the city. The destination was Stone Mountain Park, except the buses don't go all the way to the park, and the directions I could find online were not too specific. Never fear though, because the LED panels inside the bus had two of the following three pieces of information:

1. The current date
2. The current time
3. The upcoming stop

That's right! Why bother with important information like where you are headed, when you can tell people what day it is.

As we reached some ominous looking old style town I asked the driver where to go for Stone Mountain Park and luckily it was just in time to get off, and he even gave directions. There weren't any signs for the park after getting off, so as I was walking I still wasn't totally sure I was going the right way, but soon enough the park turned up.

At Stone Mountain Park there is a mountain, and it is made of stone. It was quite a hot day and a pretty steep elevation, so it was hard work getting all the way to the top. From the top you could see the downtown Atlanta skyline in the distance, and also another skyline not far away which may have been North Atlanta or something. It was a little bit foggy or polluted, so it was a little hard to make out the details.

A mountain with a hand rail.

Still not at the top.

Try to find Atlanta.

There was also a chili cook-off festival around the other side of the mountain, but I wasn't too desperate to go to that. There is some confederate carving in the side of the mountain somewhere, like a poor man's Mount Rushmore, but I couldn't tell if it would be publicly accessible with the festival in progress.

Headed back to Atlanta and stopped off for some lunch at a place called Grindhouse Killer Burgers (?) which I guess was alright, then across town to the Coca Cola Bottling Plant, or more accurately known as the World Of Coca Cola. The tour, cinema and some of the historical artifacts were passable, but the highlight was the samples room. They have a whole bunch of drink stations were you can help yourself to free samples of different drinks made by the Coca Cola company from each region: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America. The success of the drinks varied, some were great and others not so much, but by far the worst one was "Beverly" from Italy. Do not ever try it.

Georgia Aquarium across from Coca Cola.

If you pass the big Coke bottle, you've gone too far.

The 3:00-3:15 Coke session.

The last time a vending machine sold Tab.

These are other drinks.

The only machine I could get a good photo of.

The other highlight for me was seeing some kid getting told off for skipping all of these sample machines, things you may never see again, and instead using the regular machines at the back of the room: ones that just had Coke, Coke Zero, Cherry Coke etc. Their parents were not at all pleased. I saw several other people using those machines too, which I did not understand.

Back into downtown through Centennial Olympic Park - it is a park with some connection to the 1996 Olympics, but there was not a lot there besides a statue with the olympic rings. After visiting Atlanta, I'm not exactly sure how they won the olympics, maybe having a big airport helped.

Olympic Park.

Before heading off to the baseball there was enough time to go to Atlanta Underground. It sounds interesting but is just a small underground shopping mall, no bigger than what you get at Melbourne Central for example. It was not very exciting. Jumped on the free shuttle bus to get to Turner Field for the Atlanta Braves vs. New York Mets game. This was the third last home game for Chipper Jones (20 years, 1 league MVP) so the crowd would stand and cheer every time he came up to bat, only he didn't manage a hit for the game from four opportunities. The game was not bad, considering I was still kind of tired from travel, and the Braves won 2-0.

Chipper.

On the 15 minute shuttle bus back to downtown I had this guy sitting right behind me who sounded like he had contracted one of every known virus imaginable. A non-stop combination of coughing, sneezing and sniffing. I had a hat over my face for the whole trip and tried to breathe in as little as possible, somehow I managed to avoid catching anything.