I'm back home. Last night was a quite eventful in Atlantic City, but that's another tale. Right now I wanna put to the pen the engineering club trip we had to Washington, DC over the weekend. I am not myself a member of the club and neither were two or three other guys out of the 10 students who were there, but who cares, since I'm friends with the club prez.

The school gave us a van that looked like it came straight out of a 80s road trip movie where almost everyone except for that one brunette gets killed by the zombies. Fortunately, we couldn't fit everyone in there. So we made a deal with this chick who was late, so that three of us could go in her car. Weather sucked that Friday, so we made frequent stops at services areas in multiple states, drove on the shoulder in bumper-to-bumper traffic, got lost on the NJ turnpike and once in Washington D.C. But that was after I took my [self-considered] best non-human subjected photograph of the Fort McHenry Tunnel in Baltimore, MD on the I-95 (right).

The school engineering club paid for our one night stay at the Holiday Inn in Arlington, VA. That night we went to out and since the majority of the group were south Asians, decided on Ravi Kabob House. Small Pakistani restaurant named after the river that passes through the city where I was born and raised.

The next morning, as planned we went to the National Air and Space Museum, starting off with the customary getting lost in DC routine. But this time it was partly caused by the National Cherry Blossom festival and all the detours it had caused us. Washington city itself is like a real estate monopoly town, and almost everywhere I looked there was a government building, from the Department of Education and it's "No Child Left Behind" slogan to the U.S. Postal Service. Most avenues are aptly named after states, but the museum was located on Independence Avenue, right off the National Mall. The National Mall is the center piece of the city, where one panned look across the horizon shows one the grandeur of America and adds to ones belief that this nation deserves to be a super power. Now back to the museum...

Like all Smithsonian museums, admission to the National Air and Space Museum is free but you gotta wait in line to get in, and that line's pretty darn slow. After 25 minutes we finally got in, successfully passed the security sensors which apparently didn't like my metallic belt buckle.

We whizzed through two thirds of the place before being called to the meeting point since it was getting too late. Exhibits, perhaps some a bit boring, were pretty impressive. (I mean, the original Apollo 11 capsule or US and Soviet ICBMs side by side... what the fuck could be more impressive?) All I got was this cherry blossom teddy bear for someone and authentic DoD dog tags for myself (right).Some people wanted to go home, but democracy came through and we agreed upon walking to the National Museum of American History, since our original choice, the National Design Museum had already closed for the day. If you are not too much into air and space the last mentioned museum is a better choice out of the two, since it's more like a general history museum you will find it other parts of the world.

Got out, walked backed to our parking lot and drove back home. We didn't get lost on our way back, but who cares...

And hey, this trip helped me diversify my friendly relations group. :)

Ciao.