Adventure in Maryland, or, how Li got SHOT IN THE FOOTs

Okay, so Oz is being really rubbish about updating the blog, and he keeps hogging the laptop so I can't update it either. Or he gives it to me when I'm really tired and can't be bothered. Well, we've been having busy days!

Sunday at Ethan's: we have a lie-in, which feels pretty good, then take the opportunity to do an American activity, namely, going to a range and shooting guns. We wanted to do this with Ethan because he's responsible and actually knows how to work guns, so we won't shoot ourselves (that doesn't mean that we won't get shot by other people, though). So we pick up Pat (another American Oz met in halls last year), who also has never shot a pistol, who lives in Virginia. It's kind of cool driving around there because you can go into three states in about as many minutes. We got a little lost trying to find the range, but we got there in the end. To give you a little background on this place, their website advertised Monday's: Ladies' Night, Wednesdays: Couples' Night and Fridays: Parent and child night. 

We got two 9mm pistols, a Glock and a Sig, and three boxes of ammo between the four of us. Then, armed with our earmuffs and... arms, we assumed position in our lanes. Ethan had, of course, shown us how to load and fire the gun, and how to eject the magazine afterwards (because you should always set the gun down with the magazine out before you step away). I went last because I was frightened, but I think Oz and Pat were too, just hiding it better or being manlier! I wasn't good at loading the bullets at first because the spring was kind of strong and my fingers kept slipping on the bullets, but after a couple of goes getting Ethan and Oz to do it for me, I managed to work it myself. Shooting was surprisingly fun after the initial fear, though I was rubbish at aiming.

Then, I got SHOT IN THE FOOT. Not really. The guy to our right was firing increasingly large and scary guns, and as I was getting ready to fire, he fired and something flew off from somewhere and hit me in the foot (flipflops clearly being sensible footwear), scratching me and drawing blood in two places. Luckily I lived to tell the tale, and get lunch afterwards. Pat stabbed Ethan's cup with a cocktail stick so his soda was squirting out, so Ethan naturally got revenge by attempting to drive off without Pat. I think all the people in the parking lot thought we were crazy. After lunch we went to wander around Old Town in Alexandria, VA, which by our standards was really not that old. Then we all headed back to Ethan's place for Halo and a Taco Bell dinner where Oz ate entirely too much.

On Monday Oz and I went into DC, which we both really liked. It was possible to do everything in one day, as it's all really close and easy to get to. We started off at the Capitol then walked along the Mall to the Smithsonian air and space museum, where we saw moon suits and spacecraft and the original Wright Brothers plane, etc. We also went to the Natural History Museum, which I greatly preferred over the one in NYC, though we didn't spend too long looking around there. I'm developing a fascination for natural history museums, though Oz doesn't share my enthusiasm quite so much. So what did we do instead? We went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. We wanted to go to the museum of American history, but it was shut until September for some reason. The Holocaust museum was entirely depressing (as I expected), but afterwards we wandered around the Washington Monument, Reflecting Pool and Vietnam Memorial then up to the Lincoln Memorial. All very lovely, and we saw the White House afterwards too, where there were some amusing children. One was very disappointed when told she couldn't go in. The other asked her dad if George Bush drove a Mini Cooper.

Dad: I don't think so, he has a limo with lots of security

Child: Why?

Dad: In case someone tries to shoot him

Child (incredulous): But who would want to shoot him, Daddy?

Dad (very serious tones): Crazy people, honey. Crazy people.

We got back kind of late, but Ethan kindly drove us to the supermarket so we could get some food for dinner. We thought we were leaving on Tuesday, but when I checked our tickets it turned out we weren't leaving til Wednesday, so we had a whole extra day to play with. So, we went to Arlington cemetary and had a picnic lunch nearby (obviously you can't picnic in the actual cemetary). It was cool to see but it was sooooo hot - didn't help that we didn't get there til about 1 because when we called a taxi to take us to the subway station they didn't make a record of it so we had to call them again - but we saw the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns, and Kennedy's grave. It was too hot to wander around any more so we came back and had a look around Rockville, getting smoothies to refresh us. Then we went back to Ethan's, packed our bags and had some dinner. More Halo was played until around midnight, when we went to bed so we could get up fresh the next morning to get on a train to... Cincinnati.

NYC: Friday

Back again... really going to have to update more frequently if I will insist on doing a blow-by-blow account of each day. I have been meaning to update on trains but from NYC to DC I slept most of the way. However tomorrow's train journey from DC to Cincinnati is a joyous 13 hours long, so undoubtedly we'll say more then (but obviously, no internet on the train so it might be a little while until we post what we've written).

On Friday we went to do the Circle Line tour around Manhattan. The boat left at 11:30 so we went early to get tickets with our city passes, then just hung out by the fountain near the boats because we were meant to get in the queue for boarding at 11. We bought a "souvenir mug" for $6 because drinks were $4 each but with the mug you got free refills. So we had about 5 drinks then chucked the mug afterwards :P The tour itself was pretty good. With our passes we had to do the 2 hour one, but I have to say I was done with it when we'd been on the boat for just over an hour. But we did get to see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty (smaller than you'd expect) and where they're building on Ground Zero, as well as several bridges. When we got off the boat it was raining so we ducked into a deli on the way to Times Square and had some lunch. By the time we'd finished the rain had stopped so we wandered over to Times Square. I liked it there. It reminded me of Piccadilly Circus but spanning blocks, not justone intersection, and with many more lights and signs and things. Even the NYPD had a sign with flashing lights rippling all across it. 

From Times Square we walked up past the Rockefeller Center to the Museum of Modern Art. Unfortunately on Fridays between 4 and 8pm it's free, so it was really busy (though with our passes we didn't have to queue at all). I liked it though, despite the huge numbers of people taking photos of the paintings/their friends in front of the paintings. We saw Pollocks, Oldenburgs, Warhols, Matisses,  Mondrians, Lichtensteins, Picassos (including sculptures), Klees and many more, I forget! We did a pretty quick tour as it was so busy. Afterwards we went to a cafe and shared a piece of NY cheesecake and a cannoli, two foods we had been meaning to sample whilst in NYC. I liked the cheesecake, though I don't like cheesecake in England much. Refreshed by those, we went to Bloomingdale's again to look for a bracelet for Oz because his came off yesterday in the Natural History Museum and we couldn't find it again, but we didn't have much success. We walked all the way down Lexington until we stumbled across Grand Central station, which I'm glad we saw. Then we got on the subway there and went back to the hostel, because we were pretty tired.

All in all I didn't like NYC as much as I thought I would. I think this is mainly because it was so hard to get around - the subway and subway maps were extremely confusing, and though it was good to see the city on foot it did take ages to get around and was very tiring. Also it's not as if we could go on a massive shopping spree or find amazing places to eat, I think it would be much more enjoyable if you had a lot of money to spend (and could get taxis everywhere). Anyway, I think another trip to NYC will be on the agenda at some point in the distant future, after all we still have the Guggenheim to see! 

Statue of Liberty, see, she's really not all that big

New York skyline

Times Square

Oz in FAO Schwarz (New York's equivalent of Hamley's). He gets unimpressesed every time I try to take pictures of him with things. Especially giant London figures fashioned out of jelly beans, it seems. 

NYC: Thursday

The hostel gave us free breakfast of a bagel and tea/coffee. As this was served from 7am-9am, it was a good incentive for us not to sleep too long even though we'd had a late night the day before. So we got up and breakfasted then headed out. We walked around Central Park a little bit, then decided to do the Central Park Safari, where you can see some of the animals native to Manhattan before the colonists came, as well as some others they'd imported (obviously the giraffes and zebras are not native but we were interested to learn about the Manhattan Lion, which scientists believe arrived from the Appalachians several hundred thousand years ago, though they have yet to discover what prompted its migration north). For an extra dollar you could get bagels to feed to the gazelle.

We learned that in the cat family, the lion is the only one where the males and females look different.

Most of the animals were very tame, completely ignoring the Safari Humvee as it drove past. 

All right. In case you hadn't guessed, this was actually the Natural History museum, where they have dioramas of animals from lots of different areas (we couldn't find the actual Manhattan lion, I think it was in the same room as the Maine coastal moose, which we somehow passed by). In the entrance hall they have casts of dinosaur bones. There's a brontosaurus-type dinosaur - I forget what it actually was - rearing up on its hind legs to protect its offspring from the attacking allosaur. Rather dramatic but it seemed just somewhat scientifically questionable to me. Apparently it gets people through the doors. There were free tours showing you the highlights of the museum, which we did part of but then had to break off to go to the planetarium to see the Robert Redford-narrated show, Cosmic Collisions. It was pretty cool, especially the bit when they showed a planet smashing into the Earth and forming the Moon. 

After looking around the rest of the museum we walked across Central Park and had some lunch before visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We saw some Monets and there was an exhibition on Turner, though most of the works were borrowed from the Tate :P There was also an exhibition on superheroes, and some cool sculptures on the roof. I'm not really into art galleries but neither is Oz, so we wandered through fairly quickly, though we did spend a while in there because it's so big. We wanted to go to the Guggenheim but when we turned up it was shut for some reason. They were doing building works around it so perhaps that was why. Still, we saw the outside of it, and it gave us time to go to Chinatown and Little Italy, which all in all we weren't too enamoured with. But we had a tasty dinner in a Cantonese place where we were the only Caucasians, then went back to the hostel and did not much of anything before getting an early night.