Yo, Paolo we did it!

Day 7,

We woke up slightly hung over from the night before, luckily I had managed to make my way into bed the night before, the bed was so comfortable I fell straight to sleep. Paolo tells me he fell asleep before he got to bed at the foot of it, fully clothed and had woke up at about 6 that morning and put himself to bed. It just shows how much we are doing here in America that we are exhausted at the end of everyday. The time was around 11am and we had to check out by 12. We washed and changed, packed and got ready to leave.
Once we had checked out we made our way into central Philadelphia. We drove along some of the best scenery so far in our trip, along the river leading through Fairmount Park. At the end of Fairmount Park was the Philadelphia Museum of Art, also known as the Rocky Steps! We dropped into full tourist mode! We didn’t care what people thought of us running up and down the steps! This was a major stop on our trip! Check out our video’s! I want to write more about it but I think the video show’s our level of excitement.

The weather was hot! No breeze and around 90degree’s farenheit, that’s about 33 degree’s in normal temperature. Yet we still decided to walk all around town. Shade was limited when we walked from the car park and we roasted! It being a Sunday there was few food places open in the financial district that we were walking around. We hadn’t eaten yet and were on the look out for food. I had read about a famous market in the area, but we simply couldn’t find it so we settled for the first deli place we found.

Every portion of food, no matter what or where you get it here is going to fill you up! We were stuffed after this meal! Sod’s law dictated that once we gave up looking for the market we would find it! It was an incredible market and it had a man vs food location in it! But we simply couldn’t fathom eating another bite! We were gutted… Here are some photo’s of the place anyways.

We did manage to squeeze in a bite of ice cream at a famous ice cream parlour called L.D. Bassett’s. I had green tea flavour and Paolo had cookies and cream with vanilla. The heat was exhausting and we had taken in all the sites in Philadelphia that we wanted so we headed back to the car and decided that we should start on our way to Washington D.C.
I drove this portion of the trip. It was a pleasant run, although we did hit the our fair share of traffic along the way, the 2 ½ hour trip took us about 3 ½ hours in the end. We played an epic game of categories, a game where you pick a category and have to name every thing in that category. So for example of some categories we had, Disney animated films (which I won, Fox and the Hound being the winning film), Cereals (which Paolo won, Apple-Jacks being the winning cereal).

We arrived in D.C. around 8pm, this time without a Police escort. People had warned us about Washington D.C. but all the areas we drove through have been incredible. We made our way up Massachusetts avenue, we were looking for American University, we passed by the embassies on our way up (the British one being the most inspiring of course). We were staying at my friend Jessica’s place who is an Resident Assistant in Lett’s hall on campus. She was kind enough to let us stay on her floor. I’ve known Jessica for about 4 years since I first went to America, but we haven’t seen each other since. She was one of my closest friends when I was here last time but we lost touch, she was the last person I saw before I headed home 4 years ago. It was amazing to see her again

For dinner we headed off campus into a neighbourhood called Friendship, it was just as idyllic as you would imagine. Paolo and I ticked off a box on our American Road trip to-do list, we went to the Cheesecake Factory! The portions here were just as big, if not bigger, than the rest of America. I had a portion of meatloaf (another thing ticked off our list) and for dessert we both had Cheesecake (of course).

We got back to American University and got ready for bed, this was the first time we were using our sleeping bags.

We went to sleep at midnight but we stayed up chatting for about 3 hours! That’s how much fun we were having hanging out with Jess, people were banging on the walls because we were laughing so much (which is ironic considering she is the RA and supposed to make sure other students are quiet)
It was a really good catch up, and a great end to another top notch day in the USA

Quote of the Day: (while heading in Washington D.C.)
Paolo: “The white house really put’s downing street to shame”
Me: “Ye it does”
Paolo: “But I bet the Council Tax is a bitch”

Cue mass mirth and merriment!

Mile’s travelled so far: 760