My night went by without a me waking up even a single time. From when I close my eyes to when I woke up it was just like an eye blink. I fell asleep rather quickly in the darkness of my room and woke up an instant later from the sound of my dad and brother speaking in the living room.
I got out from my room and washed my face to get definitively awake and headed to my brothers’ room to wake Genzl up. He was still mad at me and the first thing he asked me as soon as he woke up was the internet password. I told him that for his sake I would have given it to him only that evening.
We all had a little breakfast, thinking we would have eaten something more filling once we would have gotten to Washington Dc downtown. We were lucky that some of the snacks our host left were sweet instead of salty.
We headed out pretty early to enjoy our visit as the longest as possible. Walking around with my father is so much stressful as he is really impatient. He even does not want to waste a little single millisecond of time, so whenever Gabe had to look for the way, he would get annoyed and upset. I hope he never travels with someone else because they would never get along. I mean, we are his family so we are kind of bulletproof by now. Or at least, we should because I have to admit it is irritating to stay with a person like that. But he is still my father, better cope with that and pull out the best positive thoughts from within.
To get to downtown we actually did not follow Gabe’s instructions and we hoped that walking and asking would have worked. We asked a girl in a seven eleven and we found our way to Silver Spring downtown first and then to Washington Dc. We had to take two bus and on the first one we were lucky that the ticket machine was broken, so we did not pay the fare.
It took us more than one hour, but we finally made it to the National Mall. It is a super long walk where all the most important monuments and museums of Washington were located. We started walking to the White House because it was my dad’s desire to go and see it. We stopped from time to time to take family pictures that most of the time did not have anything interesting in the background. But my dad is my dad, better keep him smiling than having him with a long face yelling at us. Me and Gabe took turns to ask the people to take pictures of us. My brother’s English was a little bit rusty, but he did fine.
You all know the saying “what goes around comes around”? Well, karma hit my dad and his grumpy attitude translated in some work in progress at the White House. There were wooden fences about two meters tall covering the view. The only thing he wanted to see was not completely in people’s sights. What were the chances to find any work in progress during our visit? We were unlucky with that.
One thing that I noticed while walking around was that there were so many Italians. Like, Italy is so small but we could hear Italian speaking everywhere in New York and Washington. All of them would complain about how many Italian people were there besides them. But honestly, I wanted to tell them that they were not Italian since I could tell from their accent that they were not from Milan. And we all know that Milan is Italy, while everywhere else is just Giargiania or Calafrica.
With these thoughts following me, we moved and walked miles and miles, took pictures and endured my dad’s subtle and/or silent complaints. After an hour we arrived where the statue of Abraham Lincoln was. I had a picture in my mind where four of us would have made a chair and Genzl would have sit on us to look like Lincoln, but my dad did not collaborate that much and we asked the wrong person to take us a picture. So the formation was off, the picture was too and my whole plan failed miserably.
We took pictures of the tall obelisk from there. In that moment, me and Genzl came up with a cool idea to report his travels. We decided that he would do the dance move called “floss” in every place we would have visited. At the end of our trip I will edit it and have him flossing non stop with the landscape in the background changing continuously. He was thrilled by the idea even if we was a little bit worried to get embarassed of dancing with so many people around us.
Wherever we went, Gabe asked me to take some pictures of him. I used his reflex and realized how much I missed taking pictures with a good camera and manual settings. I took a digital camera with me, with standard settings that I could not change. But having the possibility to play with the focus and the lights was really enjoyable to me. I admit I took some great pictures of him and my family during our visit in Washington.
Around 12pm everyone was so hungry. We had a really small breakfast, so we were craving for some food to fill our bellies. We stopped at a kiosk and spent fifty bucks to get one thing each. My mother’s pizza was so small, still it cost a little bit more than eight dollars. Like wow, really taking advantage of the tourist here! Since I experienced on myself the benefits of a vegan diet, I decided to go with a fresh fruit mix. I ate something from mom’s pizza and Gabe’s salad too since they did not finish their food. My stomach can handle everything and can make space to so much food. Maybe that is the reason why I was never really filled during my stay at Lighthouse Landing Camp. It is because of my mom that always cooks so much and pushes us to finish everything so that we do not need to put the leftovers in the fridge!
Whatever, after our lunch my eyes became a little bit heavy. I needed a twenty minutes power nap but we went on with our stroll. We headed to the Air & Space Museum. It was really cool and it was for free. There was a long line at the entrance that almost made me want to skip it, but in the end they were just controlling the bags so it was fast.
All the aerial and naval parts did not interest me, but the space stuff was really cool. We could not watch the documentaries because they were for a fee, but we still enjoyed the place and took pictures of different things.
When we stopped in the souvenir shop, my dad got separated from us. He just stayed outside to use wifi and my mom told me he was getting bored. I felt a little bit bad for him, but it is true that we are five and everyone has different things that the single wants to see. My dad was just failing at dealing with what we wanted to see after we were done with what he wanted to see.
In the shop we filmed a floss video with Genzl wearing a space helmet. It was fun and it made me think that we will have a super memories video at the end of this trip! All of his classmates will love it.
There were many gifts I wanted to buy as souvenir for my friends, but having paid one hundred bucks to buy the new Flixbus tickets made me more aware of my limited budget. I mean, I had lots of money but also lots of projects for when I will go back home. My music is more important than random souvenir to me. I think I will just get one booze for Dave as it is my traditional souvenir for him. Maybe something for the Milano Atletica people, but as I said I am on a budget so I will pick something for a small number of them. I hope the others will not get mad.
Done with the museum we took some quick pictures at the Capitol because it was going to rain soon. It was meant to be a rainy day, but it held off well up to that moment.
On our way home we stopped at a Walmart to buy food for the next meals. I made my family realize about the crazy spending we were doing, so we had to change our travel style into a budget oriented one. Compared to the fifty bucks lunch we had today, we could buy supper and lunch for the night and the following day at twenty four dollars. The less we spend, the more we can enjoy the things we really want to do.
We actually followed Gabe’s itinerary on our way back and it was much faster. I did not like how much we spent for the subway card, but without it we would have not been able to get in. It is not like the bus where you can pay at the entrance. In less than an hour we were back home, even if we were worried of getting lost on the bus and miss our stop. We did not and so we were back before 7pm.
I tried to have a power nap before getting back to work on my computer for different things. I could not because everyone was so loud and my brothers were listening to music from Gabe’s cellphone. When I woke up we enjoyed our first cooked meal in the US together. We had some pasta fresca, which is plain pasta with oil, tomatoes, tuna, garlic and basil. We did not have most of the ingredients though, but we still happily ate it all.
From the Slee I took up the habit of eating healthy food as snacks, so I bought some strawberries at Walmart because they were selling for a little more than a dollar. It is true though that junk food fills you the most, but I was glad I could snack and do it in a healthy way.
I was checking some things for the next Air Bnb we were staying at when Rene came to visit us. He was our host and wanted to know if everything was okay. It was great and we had a nice talk. Everyone was sleeping already except for my brother Gabriel, so he did not get in to greet us. He was a really cool guy, so I think we will leave him a five star rating after we leave.
While I was on my computer I read an article on bleeding green nation dot com that was advertising a limited edition of an Eagles Nike shoes. They were so cool that I asked my ninang if I could have sent them to her place in New York since it was cheaper than sending them in Italy. She agreed so I bought them and I can not wait to see them. I will probably never use them, maybe for a photo-shoot or a music video, but the thing with the clothes I like is that I am always afraid of ruin them.
I wrote down day number twenty two on my journal and few notes of all the other days following that one so that I could somehow catch up someday. I always fall behind and the plan was getting everything done tonight, but I was too tired to keep my eyes open so I went to sleep.
Godyl Go! 