National Museum of the American Indian (28th Aug)

Another uneventful week passed... I was too lazy and before anything, the weekend was almost over. I decided to scramble a small outing for myself and went to the National Museum of the American Indian by The Mall.

It wasn't as interesting as most of the other museums I went to around The Mall but it was still pretty educational. Here are some of the pictures taken.


National Museum of the American Indian


Entrance, National Museum of the American Indian


Museum facing the Jefferson Drive side


Potomac, National Museum of American Indian


Allies in War, Partners in Peace

Atlantic City, New Jersey (10th Aug)

I took 'off' last Thursday and went to Atlantic City with my co-worker and his friend. Atlantic City, in the state of New Jersey is on the east coast of the United States, right by the Atlantic Ocean and most famous for its.... casinos!


Heyo Atlantic Ocean!

We headed straight downbeach to Tropicana, which is right on Boardwalk. Here's one interesting fact: Boardwalk is actually one of the properties in the original Monopoly! It is the most expensive property in Monopoly... now I know why!


Boardwalk (Monopoly's most expensive property... no kidding!)

Needless to say... I lost all my money... but this time it was more 'controlled'! I left my friends in the casino and took a walk along the beach... Took off my shoes and walked into the waters... I finally touched the waters of an ocean!

Hmmm...... the water was cold ......the water felt just like...... water. Duh!


Atlantic City...


My feet... I reached the Atlantic Ocean!

What does a loser someone usually end up doing in Atlantic City?
He:
1)walks around aimlessly.
2)will grab a free newpaper and try to see what's going on in Atlantic City.
3)will grab a cuppa and waits hungrily for his buddies who are still roughing it up in the casinos!
4) all of the above!


This is what you do when you lost all your money!

Tubing on the Shenandoah River

A friend invited me to a tubing trip on Saturday. The place is Shenandoah River in Luray, Virginia, about 2 hours away from Washington, DC. So what is a tube? A tube is kind of like a donut-shaped float. Basically a group of us just took a tube each and drifted slowly down the slow river...

What made the experience so therapeutic and relaxing was that we also brought along 3 coolers worth of beer and food, which also floated down with us in their own tubes. We can paddle about, take a dip whenever we want to, or just nap under the sun while floating, or tie our tubes together to chill out together… I can’t describe how relaxing these 5 hours of tubing went!

The only downside was that being in a river all the time, it was quite impossible to bring a camera and not wetting it, so I didn’t bring my camera along. I was badly sunburnt at the end of the day despite not feeling anything at all throughout the trip… ended up looking like a red lobster! Lesson learnt: always put plenty of sun block when you are out in the sun, no matter if you feel the sun is hot or not!

Pohick Bay Regional Park, Virginia (30th July)

I was invited to a BBQ cum fishing outing last weekend (30th July). Pohick Bay Regional Park is a small park pretty close to DC. BBQ was great... I haven't ate anything till 4pm that day, and that beef patty was just so tasty!


Pohick Bay Regional Park, Virginia

Everyone had a go at fishing that day and we didn't have much luck... The good news was... we actually caught a fish... yup! just ONE fish. Everyone took turns taking photos with the fish before we released it back into the water. It would have been really fun if we were not bitten by those 'killer flies' on the 'beach'... they actually look like some houseflies... only that they are immune to bugspray and they suck blood!! Not surprisngly, we didn't stay very long there!


I caught a fish! (I'm lying!)

Overall, it was quite fun to know some new friends and hang out a little bit. We later had some blue crabs in a crabhouse where I finally tasted crabs the Chesapeake Bay way!

Capitol Building Revisited (8th July)

This is kind of a late post... my friend Meiyan visited me one week after the Niagara Falls trip and we went to visit the Capitol Building in DC. Time passes are need for a tour of the building and they are limited and usually will go out in an hour or two (in the morning by the way!!).

So we actually had to get there early in the morning (quite sad for a Saturday actually...) to get the passes and waited till 12-ish before we can go for the tour. It feels somewhat like visiting the Istana in Singapore... some Singaporeans just might never do it ever in their lives... (like me for example...)

Anyway, the Capitol tour was really good! The guide was very informative and the architecture was quite amazing. The Rotunda was like the books said.... quite awesome. We were only allowed to a few sections of the Capitol, which is heavily guarded. Check out the art of the Capitol Building here.


The Capitol Building, Washington DC


The Rotunda, Capitol Building