Day 6-7: The messup

This one goes out to the fine people of Estravel. Last morning I checked out from one hotel and into a new one. The cab driver dropped me off at the wrong hotel, but that didn't even aggravate me much. Checked in for one night and ordered a car for transfer to the airport next morning. The car arrived (a long wheelbase Lincoln Towncar that amazingly cost $60 vs. $52 for ordinary dirty taxicab) and took me to Dulles. Where I found out that my plane is to leave on 15th not 13th. And this is why: apparently, Estravel had done another two booking in another hotel for the last two days of my stay. As I had done the planning a long time ago and did not see these bookings in the pile of papers and tickets the sort of trip requires I figured that my check-out date from the hotel is also my departure date. This would have undoubtedly surfaced earlier, but Estravel DID NOT GIVE ME ANY INFORMATION WHATSOEVER UP TO THE POINT WHERE MY PLANE WAS ALREADY LEAVING. Who would have thought that a 7-day stay in Washington would need FIVE different hotel bookings in two different hotels?

I'm still angry but about to go jogging which usually calms me down a little bit.

Spent the day sleeping and shopping. Went to a mall at Pentagon City with a hope to find a Discovery Channel store and maybe some place to get something to clean the extremely dusty sensor of my D10. Found the former (which was almost devoid of any Discovery-channel related stuff, no Mythbusters t-shirt this time unfortunately) but not the latter. At the mac store I stumbled upon Bose headphones attached to an iPod. Boy, are they good. I have never ever ever heard such audio quality and the noise cancellation is amazing: the whole background rumble of a big mall just went away on a flick of a switch. They are portable, too, which is important for me. But they cost $300. Still longing, but at the moment, they are just too expensive.

Day 5: still gathering

Washington at dusk. It's raining as I'm jogging towards the White House with Sepultura "Criminals in Uniform" blasting in my ears. Two police cars pull over right next to me with their lights flashing.

The rest of the day started off in a very slow and jetlagged manner. We were given a tour of the Jefferson building and I honestly tried to take pictures. Just nothing I came up with didn't do the place any justice so here's a picture of the neighboring Supreme Court instead. Aren't we just ants?

Day 4: the gathering

Finally got to what I was sent here for - the Seminar. It was extremely tiring (9 hours of alphabet soup could kill a horse) but useful. And the venue! Jefferson building of the Library of Congress. Just fabulous. However, I did not bring my camera which meant I could hardly take advantage of the glorious morning and evening light with no tourists around. This is something that shall be righted today.

Oh, one more thing. The basic message of Washington seems to be "if you don't live here, you don't belong here". Hadn't I protested the hotel would have made me move rooms for just one day. After which I would have stayed in another hotel for one day. Why would anybody do that? Also, the metro is just driving me nuts: the ticket machine is happy to sell you a day pass 8AM but nothing indicates that these things do not work till 0930. The fare system is also quite cool: when buying a ticket, you need to enter the price of your journey. Which is not indicated anywhere. After talking to the guy in charge I learned that my trip would cost me $1.35 (at least it's cheap), thank you very much.

Another day of the seminar awaits, and this time I'll bring the camera.