A travel to remember

I love to travel. Traveling allows me to meet new places, people and cultures and interact with them. Every place there is something new to experience and learn. I made a lot of friends along my travels and it is something that I value. But there are some trips that I never forget. Not because the hotel, the food, the local people or even the city that I have traveled to, but because the history created around it. That was what happened when I traveled to Washington DC with my colleagues. I met new people, had fun and went through an adventure.

I came to New York, as an international student, with another hundred fifty Brazilians and before starting college classes during the fall, we had a break during the last week of summer. That was a great moment for planning a trip. We all were excited to go to Miami because we were at summer and almost all Brazilians like to go to beaches. Like every travel planning, we tried to find companies to rent a car for eight people. Unfortunately, here in the US a special driver license is required to drive mini vans so we started to look for two regular cars. After applying some days planning how much money each one of us would spend, how much money we would need for gas, food, and etc. we noticed that it would be more expensive than we thought, about two hundred more. Because of the high cost, some people started to give up the travel idea; and that was happened! No one was going to Miami anymore.

The idea of staying in New York during my break was freaking me out. I needed to travel even for a nearly place or even for couple days. As my mother always say: We approach from those who are similar to ourselves. Fortunately she was right and my other colleagues were feeling the same that I was.  So the planning started again, but we did not know where to go yet. We thought about Boston, Atlantic City, Chicago, Washington DC and Canada. Boston is a nice place to visit I think but in the summer is hard to find a hostel or even a hotel. The bus to Chicago was too much expensive and, I do not know why, but we did not find any hotel or hostel in Atlantic City. “Who was the crazy guy that mentioned Canada?” I wondered when one of them came up if the name. When we started our research around Washington, we found buses and hostels with excellent prices.

Not to mention that I, Roberto and Ivo almost lost the bus, all of us arrived in Washington as we planned. But our plan was just to go to Washington, so we did not know where the tourist spots were or where to go we just knew that we were hungry. It may can be obvious, but we started at the bus station; eating at Johnny Rockets. After that we went to our “museum journey”. The first stop was in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, followed by the National Museum of Art and then the National Air and Space Museum. Those museums are nice; I cannot imagine how museums can find so much information with so much details. The time ran out and we did not notice it, so when we went to National World War II Memorial the sun was setting. I cannot describe it in words. The sky was unbelievably beautiful.

After the sun set you may thinking, “now they went to a hotel” or “they probably went to a party” but not! We went to Trader Joe’s, a market that sells natural foods without pesticides. As part of our trip, we decided not book a hotel or a hostel! So we needed to buy food for the overnight. We were by ourselves in the Washington’s streets. After 8 PM there was no one in the streets, just some homeless people. That really scared me but we were a group of seven, so no one would disturb us. We walked a lot and finally we found a little gallery that had some tables and chairs in the back, but inside an open area. That night was cold and luckily all of us brought coats. While we were having fun, laughing and joking, we heard things moving in the grass near to us. As we stopped to talk, the sound became louder and louder when then three rats come out of the grass. We did not know what to think but it was good to know that was just rats. After that we went to Washington monument to try seeing the sunrise. Cold was the word for that day. Getting there, we sat in the cold marble seat that rounds the monument to continue our talking. With the time going, we slept and the sun was already raised when we woke up. At least we had the opportunity to climb the obelisk.

This unplanned trip may seem to be disaster, but was totally the opposite. Even sleeping away, without bathing or recharging my smartphone I had the opportunity to meet a new place more in depth and from a different perspective. In addition, I also had the chance to know more about my colleagues (that now I call friends) and, of course, had some fun from this entire situation. I will never forget these moment!