I'm updating tonight for two reasons, one because our DC hotel's Internet went dumb last night (which was the original time I wanted to post up these DC photos), and two because I am in Ohio. There's nothing to do here. Don't get me wrong, it's an alright place, Columbus is pretty cool, but there's nothing really here. This was the first city, Dayton, my Dad lived in when he came to America thirty or so years ago, so that's why I decided we should stay a night; we needed a pit stop between DC and Chicago so this seemed appropriate.

We spent all day in DC yesterday, and I think we covered most of it, haha. Three weeks is definitely not enough time to jump into every city thoroughly, but I think we're doing pretty well so far by skimming over the most important parts. DC is very impressive. The whole city is one huge landmark. The White House is kind of guarded off from the streets, you have to walk there pretty much, and very close by are the Washington Monument, the Reflecting Pool, and the Lincoln Memorial; which in turn are very close by to the Jefferson Memorial and the Iwo Jima Memorial. The whole city pretty much revolves around these monuments, which makes it a very small area, but extremely beautiful.

The place is so damn clean and the roads are just beautifully organized. I have never seen so many roundabouts in one place before! It's great during the day, but at night, the monuments are just breathtaking. Everything is open to everyone for free and for all hours of the night. And although they don't allow tripods everywhere (I was asked to not use mine next to Lincoln), this city is a great place for night shots. And with the architecture of this city, who wouldn't want to take photos?

But before I bust out a few photos from the trip, I want to quickly mention where we went before DC. We were coming from Niagara Falls (which I totally skipped photo wise, I'll put them up on some off night, like when we're in Grand Prairie, Texas or some place), so we passed through Philadelphia before entering Washington DC. We were short on time, so we could only check out a few places, but there was no chance I'd skip one place in particular. I had no idea where it was or what it looked like, but I was determined to locate it. Luckily, the GPS we bought for this trip is really great (a Garmin Nuvi series GPS) and found it without any problems. The only thing left to do was to physically go there. So we headed out. We left Philadelphia and quickly entered the ghetto area, which still looked alright (by the way though, I was really disappointed by Philadelphia, not at all like how I imagined it - I'll blame it on the short time we spent in the city though). We drove through that area for a bit and then almost instantly, the ghetto turned into one of the most upscale neighborhoods ever! It was surprising to see how quickly it changed, but not shocked because it made sense, the reason I wanted to go there was because a real rich person used to live there, how could that person live in such a ghetto? But he didn't, and I think I kind of lost a little respect for him I gained while in the ghetto, haha. But it's alright. Anyway, we finally showed up to the place I wanted to go to: (I apologize for the crapiness of the photo)

Lower Merion High School in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania. Does anyone know who attended this high school? That's right, Mr. Kobe Bryant. I went to Kobe's old school! But I was somewhat bummed, I hoped there would be a huge basketball court with an even larger statue of Kobe on top of the roof, but I was mistaken, ah well. But that's my Kobe story, and I'm sure it undid stupid Shaq's rap. Some people found it funny, and although I thought it was pretty cool, it made me sad because it was about Kobe. Good thing he lost his badge, Shaq did. Alright, now on to the DC photos!

The Washington Monument. I know, I know, you've probably seen loads better photos of this crazy thing than the one above, but it wasn't the greatest day! And, I was just too lazy to walk all the way to take wide shot, it probably wouldn't have turned out that great anyway, it was way too sunny to take photos of these white monuments! Instead of walking over to it, I turned around and walked in the other direction to see:

Abe. I don't want to toot my own horn or anything, but I really like this photo. I love zooming in, maybe even more than wide angle. Seeing things your eyes never, I love it! If you were paying attention, you'd have noticed that I used the above photo for this post's graphic, except I changed it a lot, I was a little bored so I made it look like an oldy photo. I should've blurred it too, but then it looked too old, haha. But getting to the memorial, the Abe statue is just amazing. I was in awe the whole time. I mean, you see it all the time on the back of your penny, but wow is it beautiful! How about a couple night shots?

Both of these photos are from the WWII Memorial, right next to the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. You can kind of see the fountains at the bottom of the Washington Monument photo. The fountains were very nice and I just had to take a night shot to let the fountains flow with an open shutter. I love flowing water. The second of those two shots isn't too great. I was just having fun with the photo and didn't expect to do anything with it - I only took one version of it. It was nearly pitch black so I couldn't even tell if I got those two girls under the fountain when I took it, but I was so surprised by the composition when I got to my room, I had to show it. It's totally overblown, but who cares, I still like it. I'll leave you with this final photo, which may be my favorite of DC:

The Lincoln Memorial with its reflection in the Reflecting Pool (so that's why they named it that!). Don't ask me how I took this shot, I totally cheated, but wasn't it worth it? My favorite. I took it at about eleven at night, and because of that, the sky was very dark in comparison to the monument. Cameras cannot capture the levels of color as well as our eyes can, so the photo would be way too overblown or it would have too much dark spaces, so... I combined them both, shh, haha. I hope you like it, even though you know I'm a cheater. I should've showed up at sunset so there would be some color in the sky, but I came late. Ah well.

So that wraps up the DC photos, I'm going to bed. We're off to Chicago in the morning, Insha Allah, just in time for the NBA Draft in which Chicago has the first pick! Isn't that cool? Guess where we're staying? The Hilton, haha. I'm totally not the person who would pay lots of money for a place to sleep, like the Hilton, but it's my Mom's birthday tomorrow (June 27, we stay there for two nights), so it's a special occasion. I need to get an oil change too, we'll have driven almost 5,000 miles when we reach Chicago... and we still have another 3,500 or so to go. How will we get through this... haha. Take care everyone, hope you enjoyed the photos and I hope I made up for my New York laziness! see u.