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This is the Union Station in Washington DC. It is one of
the most ornate metro stations in the city and is also the
place where the long distance trains stop.
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Here's a memorial in honor of Christopher Columbus right
in front of the Union Station.
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This is the Philatelic Museum, one of the Smithsonian
Museums in the city. It's right next to the Union
Station. Knowing me, it was obvious that I would go
there. This is just the corridor leading into the main
parts of the museum.
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Here is a life size depiction of one of the different
modes of transport employed by the US Postal Service. The
planes particularly looked awesome.
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This is US Capitol. I was there long enough to watch the
lights slowly take effect. It's huge and made of marble
and if I found this thing looking good, I wonder how great
the Taj Mahal would look.
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This is me at the US Capitol. The dome seems charged and
ready ready to obliterate the moon or something!
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This is the Capitol Christmas Tree with the US Capitol in
the background. This tree is insanely huge and
suffocatingly decorated. Apparently this tree is a gift
from New Mexico and the ornaments were made by thousands
of school children from that state.
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There's this huge pool of water in front of the Capitol
with ducks in it. It's really nice to sit by this pool and
enjoy the lights.
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The Washington Monument with a sunset in the background as
seen from the US Capitol.
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There's this really long straight path from the Capitol to
the Washington Monument. I got pretty tired trying to
reach the Monument from the Capitol. So I stopped halfway
and took these snaps before going back to the hotel. It
was surprisingly difficult to take these long exposure
shots and avoid blurring the photographs. Yeah, but the
lighting of these huge buildings looked really nice.
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The picture above and below are the New York Ave-Florida
Ave Gallaudet and the Woodley Park-Zoo metro stations
respectively. I think the train dives underground
immediately after the above station.
The whole experience of travelling by the metro network
was simply awesome. It just seemed so futuristic compared
to another impressive network - the Mumbai locals. You buy
tickets from a vending machine type thing. There are gates
at the entry and exit of the station. You are supposed to
insert your ticket into a slit in the gate and if your
ticket checks out (smartcard type mechanism I guess), the
gate opens and you get your ticket back at the other end
of the gate. As the train arrives on the platform, lights
laid along the edges of the platform begin blinking. The
doors of the trains open and close automatically and are
nicely levelled with the platform so even old and
handicapped people can effortlessly use the metro. The
other thing worth mentioning is the proximity of the major
tourist attractions to the stations, a tribute to the
planning that went into setting up the network.
I thought that the whole metro system at Washington DC was
probably as efficient and invaluable as the Mumbai
locals. The thing that really differs is the huge
population that the Mumbai locals cater to as opposed to
the (comparatively very) few that travel the metro. Most
of the schemes that work here would be completely
impractical to Mumbai.
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Most of my second day at Washington DC was spent at the
National Museum. This is one of the sites in the city that
isn't on strip between the Capitol and the Washington
Monument. If you travel by the metro you would get down at
the Woodley Park-Zoo metro station. This station has like
the biggest escalator I have ever seen. It was something
like three or four storeys high and took about ten minutes
to ride.
The animals were nice and very well taken care for. The
place was very clean. It had this ridiculously expensive
eating place and gift shop. But yeah... it's definitely
must visit.
The zoo also arranges these "classes" where they give
information about some animal or the other making it not
only a fun place for kids but in the true sense -
educational.
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Here's some of the wildlife at the zoo. The animals seemed
to very active compared the zoos I had visited back
home. Heck there were times when I felt that the animals
were actually posing for the photographs!
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These are supposed to be some sort of wolves. Well they
look no bigger than some big dogs. But still, devoted this
to the NC State logo - Go Wolfpack!
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Here's the main attraction of the National Zoo - the giant
pandas. Really magnificient creatures these things
are. There was something very strange that I found
here. The zoo actually sold fruits and sugarcane to the
public so that they can feed the pandas. I mean at most
zoos you find signs "Do not feed the animals", but here
they found a nice solution to that problem - keeps
everyone happy!
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Here's the bird house in the national zoo. It had quite a
lot of birds but frankly it was just too boring though I
did see a couple of really strange looking birds there.
The second picture is just a big pool of water with a lot
of ducks in it which for some reason people don't notice!
I liked this snap and enjoyed the feel of this place at
the zoo. This snap has been my wallpaper for quite some
time.
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Here is a pair of America's national bird - the bald
eagle. These birds are pretty huge and extremely
intimidating.
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This zoo even had a couple of beavers. I had never seen
these animals back home in India. I had heard of these
animals being dam builders and all but here they were
actually doing that! I mean it seemed as if they were
putting on an act or something. Really cool!
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My facination for this pointy object sticking into a
sunsetty sky continues onto the the second day too. Here's
a shot of the structure from close to the Smithsonian Air
and Space Museum.
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Here I am at the entrance of the Smithsonian Air and Space
Museum. This is the one that most people visit and houses
the first plane by the Wright brothers. Make sure you
schedule your visit with at least two hours for this
museum. The life size exhibits and the toy type simulation
of the basic flying principles really make it very
difficult to "fly" through this awesome place.
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Here's a couple of space vehicles that were there there at
the museum. The first one is the Mar's Viking, the second
some lunar thing and the third I absolutely do not
remember but I think it's some sort of a satellite launch
vehicle.
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Ok, I don't exactly remember what this was but I vaguely
remember this having something to do with the Saturn
project. Notice the size of the people relative to this
vehicle. I just cannot exaggerate how massive this thing
was.
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This was a life size depiction of the first moon landing
with the astronauts and all !
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Here's some really neat space gear. As far as I can
remember, the second picture is supposed to be the life
size replicas of the three lunar heroes.
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The first picture is the cross section of a jet engine and
the second probably an even bigger engine . It was one of
the exhibits at the educational section of the museum
where there were these toy models demonstrating flying
principles like Newton's third law and Bernoulli's
principle. There's also these cool mini wind tunnels which
showed the flow of air over the wings of planes and the
configuration of the wing (angle) was hand tweakable. I
just wish I had taken snaps of those things.
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These two are just pictures of the the ground floor hall
as seen from the first floor. Just check out how populated
the "airspace" of the hall is with large models of
airplanes.
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Here are a few pictures of the Whitehouse, America's
Rashtrapati Bhavan. Quite frankly it was much smaller than
what I had expected.
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This is "The Department of the Treasury", another very
ornate building right next to the Whitehouse.
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The first photograph is a street in front of the
Whitehouse which is closed to traffic. The second was one
of the busy city streets at peak hours and the third was
just one of the many statues which stand all over the
city.
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The first photograph is one I really like. It's the
Washington monument with a brace of wild ducks flying
by. Too bad the weather was as gloomy as it was that day
or it would have made a terrific snap.
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