The Capital....Washington D.C.

Our time in DC was filled with staying in the ghetto (or the hood if you prefer), lots and lots of walking, a whole lot of museums and a trillion monuments. 

Our room in the hood was actually nice, despite having bars on the window. But hey we had a private bathroom!

The subway in DC

The Capitol Building

Squirrel.... we will never get sick of seeing these cute little critters.

The Smithsonian Institute information building. (Kristian went a little crazy with the camera in DC, so much so I had to confiscate it for a while)

While in Washington we visited 3 of the 19 museums that are part of the Smithsonian Institute. The first on on the list was the American Natural History Museum which was full of dinosaurs, Egyptian mummies etc etc as you will see below.

That's a visual representation of what it looks like to be hungover. 

Our next museum stop was the American History Museum which was pretty cool.

In the museum we got to see the star spangled banner (flag) that inspired the american national anthem, unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos of it but it was HUGE and old looking.

The Washington Monument... under renovations which was lame.

The Lincoln Memorial

Kristian insisted that this go on the blog. It was a failed attempt as a selfie due to wind and horrible sun glare as you can tell.

The Capitol building up close.

View of the National Mall from the Capitol building.

Of course we had to pay the Obama's a visit during our stay in DC. The White House was actually pretty cool to see.

Every selfie we took Kristian's head managed to block out the White House every single time. So here is a shot of us and the White House lawn.

WWII Memorial

Slowly getting to the Lincoln Memorial which seemed to take forever.

While we were around all the memorials there were heaps of old War Veterans getting shown around the sites. They were wearing some of there old uniform and you could tell they were so happy to be in DC, it was a nice thing to see.

The Reflecting Pool & Washington Monument

The Lincoln Memorial. 

Being a typical tourist, it had to be done. 

Click on the photo to get a better view.

The Lincoln memorial, the outside and close up.

Kristian seems to think I have an obsession with cemeteries but I say its more a fascination but only with cemeteries here in the USA. So of course when I heard the Arlington National Cemetery was in Virginia (literally just across the bridge behind the Lincoln Memorial) I knew we had to pay it a visit, especially when I heard former US President John F Kennedy & his family were buried there.

A quick snap of the JFK and Jackie O grave. You were allowed to take photos but you had to be silent and of course our camera had every possible sound setting turned on so it made it a little awkward to take photos.

The Arlington Cemetery is the National Cemetery so to be buried there you had to serve your country in some way. So as expected there were hundreds upon hundreds of white military head stones.

All we could see were white headstones, they were just endless. This photo and the ones below show this but it still doesn't seem to show exactly how far they went.

Another one of Kristian's many snaps, he gets a bit excited and takes many photos of many different buildings.

And here's another one, don't know which building it is exactly, but it looks cool nonetheless. 

Our last Museum on the list was the National Air & Space Museum. Now this museum was really cool but by the time we got to it we had walked 15 or more kilometers so needless to say we rushed through there pretty quick as our legs simply didn't want to walk any further, plus we had a hockey game to attend.

You may have noticed hockey has been a general theme during our trip. We decided we would try and go to as many games we possibly could no matter what teams were playing. We were lucky enough to find some cheap tickets to a Washington Capitals home game against the Florida Panthers.

Opening puck drop.

Cool panorama of the stadium.

The game was so good that it ended in a tie which meant overtime and then a shootout which was so cool to see as shootouts don't happen too often.

And yes the Caps won, which was such a great experience to see the home crowd go crazy.

Kristian snapped a couple of photos of the area we stayed. The photos don't do it justice what so ever, but I'm pretty sure you can gather that the area was pretty seedy.

Nothing makes you feel safer at night than bars on your windows.

So that's all we did in Washington, which happens to be more than both our legs can handle in 2 days. But nonetheless we had time to rest in Pittsburgh and recover before heading to Detroit (just in case we needed to run from something/someone for any particular reason). 

Pittsburgh was pretty chill, but it was a really nice place, which we will document in our next post! 

So until then, hope everyone's doing well and we will talk soon.

Lauren & Kristian. 

Philadelphia :)

So now we move on to the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia. We had two separate stints in Phily due to us wanting to go back to New York City after our initial 6 nights there. Phily was an awesome place, and we were lucky enough to stay in 3 different places during our visit. The first was in an old warehouse building converted to a loft, which had amazing 180 degree views of North Phily and beyond. It was stunning.
And we also had this little powder puff below....

This was our first air bnb hosts dog in Philadelphia. His name was either Clyde or Clive, but we just called him mini Lassie.

Mini Lassie was fascinated with Kristian.

In Philadelphia we visited The Reading Terminal Market which has a store called De Nics which was featured on Man vs Food. Of course we had to pay this wonderful store a visit. And by gosh it was worth it! Above is my roast beef sandwich which was beyond delicious.

Just look at all that damn roast beef!

Our first night in Philadelphia marked our first Flyers game.

View of Philadelphia from the Wells Fargo Center.

The Jumbotron. I think we actually got on it during our second Flyers game a week later. 

Lauren was super excited.

She was even more excited because the Flyers won!

Just for one second have a read of the middle item on this menu of the Ice Cream Institution in Philadelphia (you may need to click on it to enlarge it to get a proper look). Now picture in your head what it could possibly look like.  

BAM, this beast was out of this world, and thankfully we were sharing! Again, any Man vs Food fans would recognise this from his Philly episode, and it was even better than he described. It also helped that during our third stay in Philadelphia we were only 2 blocks from this place. 

This is the Institution I was just talking about. Franklin Fountain is the creator of such monstrosity. 

Fun fact # 1: Turns out Lauren has the same birthday as Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin's grave.

The graveyard where Benjamin Franklin is buried, Lauren has a weird thing for graveyards. 

City Hall

Our first Chick - Fil - A experience and it was DELICIOUS! WAFFLE FRIES, YES PLEASE.

One of the many statues commemorating someone important in US history, I just cannot remember who such men where. 

The Rocky stairs (cue the rocky music in your head).

We have a video of us running the Rocky steps which I'm sure will feature as part of our movie of the trip.

The amazingly beautiful skyline of Philadelphia. 

I just didn't have enough time to raise my arms high enough to appropriately reproduce the Rocky pose, sorry to all the fans out there. I will try harder next time. 

The proper rocky pose, again i apologize. 

After running the Rocky steps we paid a visit to the very creepy Eastern State Penitentiary which was the very first penitentiary in America.

One of the many abandoned cell rows. 

One of the many empty cells that provided 'solitude' for the inmate. 

Lauren wasn't aware that I had her on prison cam. She was waiting for me to come out of one of the exhibitions when I found a camera that shows you every square inch of the prison. So I decided to find her, zoom in, zoom in some more, then some more again. So by the time I shot this photo she was on the screen for all to see (in which everyone was laughing at the fact I had zoomed in so far and put her face on the big screen for everyone to see). What was even better was that after this photo I had zoomed in even further to the point that her face took up the whole screen for all to see. It made me and other fellows laugh, the women tended to sympathize with Lauren for posting her face on the big screen, but it was totally worth it. 

This was Al Capones cell in Eastern State.... very luxurious.
Fun Fact #2: Lauren also shares a birthday with Al Capone.

The day after visiting the jail we went to NY for two nights, so the next lot of photos are from our most recent stint in Phily.

The roll to the top of the picture you would recognize from before. Correct, it was the roast beef roll from earlier in the post. However the roll in the lower half of the photo, or closer to the camera, was in essence a game/life changer. Australia, meet pulled pork, in its finest and most delicious form. This roll was simply outrageous. We thoroughly enjoyed the roast beef roll, so much so Lauren got another, but after tasting the pulled pork, the comparison was devastating. The flavour, the texture, the everything was indescribable. So much so I will have to leave it at that.

On our first night back in Phily we went to another Flyers home game and we were 4 rows from the front!
Lauren pretending to be a Flyers goalie, and to be honest she'd probably do a better job than both their current rostered goalies by a long shot. 

Imagine three rows back from where Lauren was standing now, and these were our seats. They were that close you made eye contact with players as they went past. It was sensational. 

Lauren has forever wanted a photo with Claude Giroux (number 28 in the background) and she finally got one, albeit with is back turned. 

Scott Hartnell, another one of Lauren's favourite players.
Yes, we were that close! 

Amazingly I managed to catch a pre-game puck they used for practice! Needless to say Lauren was incredibly happy.

We finally got to see some blood! (Zoom in for a closer look! You know you want to)

The room where the Declaration of Independence was created and signed.

This was some of the best fried rice and BBQ pork we had ever eaten, bar none (that includes you Pacific house!). Just look at it and drool. All for $13 aswell which made it even more delicious.

The Liberty Bell. Turns out they tried to fix it and only made that crack worse. 

Independence Hall, where the constitution and declaration were created and signed. 

Now do you remember that final New York City post that had the picture of what Lauren described as the cutest dog she had ever seen, well this was the one that quickly toppled that previous dog in New York City. You are probably struggling to see it because it was just that small, but if you click on the photo (or just look at the photo below for a zoomed in look) and look at the feet of the woman standing in the middle (to the left of the woman in the white jumper) you'll see the tiniest dog that even we struggled to call a dog. It was more of a hamster or guinea pig. But nonetheless it was very very cute. I do feel sorry for the woman walking it though, every single person stopped to either look at it, pat it or take a photo of it. I can't help but feel that would be a very long walk. Not that the dog needs exercise, its that small a trot to the kitchen would be a marathon. Turns out it was 8 and a half weeks old and the runt of the litter, it will get a bit bigger but not by alot.
Ohh by the way, Jax is the cutest dog in the world in my opinion. Its a no contest. 

As it turns out this is the oldest residential street in the whole of the United States. Cool huh. 

On our last night in Phily we just had to pay another visit to the incredibly delicious Franklin Fountain.
Lauren was a little excited....

For all of you that read the 'Lauren goes superman post' in Boston, this is EXACTLY what it looked like from my perspective. Yes it was that dramatic. 

Both of us at the Love Park.

So that is it for Philadelphia, from the people we met, to the things we saw and did, the city wildly blew our expectations in every possible way. So much we could see ourselves living their. The way we come to that conclusion is that during/after we leave a city, we always rate it on a subjective and objective livability scale. And Philadelphia ranked amongst the highest, sitting up their with Toronto and of course New York. 

So we are in Washington now literally staying in the ghetto. So much so that last night I ditched my wallet and hid $20 in my sock in fear of getting mugged. Its not a good sign when all there is to do in your neighborhood is to hang around on street corners. But don't stress, we have metal bars on all windows protecting us from intruders, so we are safe!

So our next post will be when we leave Washington DC and move onto Pittsburgh, so until then!

Kristian & Lauren.