Washington, DC.

Our next destination was Washington, DC. After 6 hours, we were already in the capital of the United States of America. This city immediately struck us with its beauty and cleanliness. In general, we were very disappointed with our strange choice of days in each city. For some reason, we were supposed to be in Washington for only one night and two days. But since we arrived early, we thought two days would be enough. That was in theory. As it turned out in practice, since we hadn't booked accommodation in advance, we had to look for it on the spot. The problem was that, for some reason, there were very few cheap hostels in Washington, and even those were all booked. At the end of our first day, we finally managed to find one hostel, having spent the whole day looking for it. It was very inconvenient that none of us had brought a laptop or even a phone with internet access. Therefore, we always had to pay for internet, and most importantly, look for places where you could even find an internet center. By the way, for those planning to visit this wonderful city, I can recommend Capitol City Hostel (http://www.hostelhandbook.com/capitalcity/) – it is the only student, not particularly expensive hostel where we found vacancies. The pleasant man who runs this hostel even allowed us to stay for just one night, even though they usually require a minimum stay of two nights (maybe he just saw our tired and exhausted look and felt sorry for us, who knows). What pleased us most was that there were computers there that we could use to browse the internet as much as we wanted! Plus: free breakfast, free toast with jam all day, the option to leave our luggage there the next day for just $5 (if you had already checked out), and it's not very far away; from the bus stop across the street, you can take a bus directly to the White House. And in general, this hostel owner turned out to be a great person. For example, if you checked out in the morning, but your bus wasn't until late at night, and you needed somewhere to kill time, he would let you spend that time there, and you could eat, use the internet, or take a shower (he even gave us fresh towels). Of course, at first, we were looking for a catch. It's just really strange that for such a low price, a person does all this out of the kindness of his heart. But surprisingly, we didn't find any catch.

In the evening, we finally went to see the famous Capitol, which you can see in almost all movies that show Washington DC. It is such beauty that it is simply impossible to describe in words. We walked around the city center and hurried back to our hostel to write letters to our parents. The next morning, waking up early, we went to see the White House. We thought for a long time: "And where is it? Don't tell me that this small white building at a decent distance from the fence is the White House. Is that really it?!" It was. It's a pity, of course, that they don't let you past the fence; because of this, it doesn't make as strong an impression as one would expect. For the rest of the time, we walked at a fast pace, trying to see everything in one day, visiting museums, looking at the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. It was pleasing that everything is located not far from each other and almost everything is free. Of course, one day is not enough to walk around all these interesting places. I think you need at least two full days. It was surprising that the city is very calm and there are quite few people on the streets. To ask someone something, we first had to find that "someone".