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!
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