My crazy trip to the US [image heavy]

I'm back from my 4-day/3-night stay in the US!!!! *_*

My trip was nothing special... but I just wanted to document it here. I won't be posting more travel related posts in a long while. As much as I'd love to travel more often, I lack the funds and the time. xD

Anyway, I really wanted to go to New York City since I've never been there so my parents decided to book a bus tour. A crazy tour, for a lot of reasons. We went through seven states, and visited many cities, not just NYC. Our schedule was just so tight there was basically no time for shopping at all, just taking pictures. It was a sight-seeing trip, basically. Rushing from city to city and getting no sleep made me realize how much I hate joining tours. >_< But I guess after this trip... I'm ready to take on any kind of tour lol.


Day 1 - Boston. How I hate waking up at 4am...


Arrived in Boston. Went to Harvard University campus. I went on a 3-4 day bus tour to Boston when I was 7 or 8 years old, but I don't remember much of it...


I do remember eating fresh lobster for dinner at a nice restaurant, though... and not fast food at Quincy Market, like this time. I liked the lobster salad from this vendor, but not the clam chowder... I couldn't taste any seafood in it at all.


Not sure why they're called oyster crackers cause they don't contain any oysters ><
We went back to the hotel after dinner and that was Boston... orz

Day 2 - New York City. Wake up call at 5:15am...

On top of the Rockefeller building... if I had a choice I would have not gone to this attraction because the rain/fog ruined what would have been a beautiful view. To me this is like the CN Tower view... so I thought it was a waste of time. =_= I didn't enjoy the NBC building/gift shop as much I guess cause I don't even watch most of the TV shows from that station..


What I wanted to see most was Times Square of course.


I just love the craziness of it all. I literally had time to snap a few pictures on the streets after lunch and that was it. ;_;


Lego store... again, took a few pictures once I stepped inside and that's it.


THE most flowery chocolate store I have ever seen in my entire life. o_o


I wish I bought some... T_T My memory card was full so I had to switch to my other camera at this point. (The date stamp is wrong and I'm not sure how it got there but now I don't know how to get rid of it... >_<) Next we went to see the Statue of Liberty.


It was the longest boat ride of my life, and the captain's voice just droned on and on so that I nearly fell asleep on the boat. The Statue seemed so much smaller for some reason... maybe it's because we didn't get up onto the island... but to me this is definitely one of those "been there, done that...never again" kind of things... After the 2hour boat ride (I thought it was 30min max...) we had a (very cheap) buffet dinner. I'm so sick of buffets now...

Day 3 - Philadelphia + Washington DC. Wake up call was at 6:30am, not bad AT ALL. I think this was my favourite day out of all. I'm not big on history but I found American history to be quite interesting... :)

It was nice because it happened to be the 4th of July, and all the streets were closed off and all the museums were open. Independence day is a very big deal (compared to Canada Day) such that even though I'm not American, I felt pretty amused seeing all the festivities happening around me because you don't get even a fraction of the enthusiasm and excitement and pride in Canada. It made me wish I was American... = =


At first, I didn't want to go on this tour because I only wanted to go to New York... but I forgot that Washington was where the National Art Gallery was!! I've been wanting to go there since... grade 12 art class when we were studying the segment on history... XD


This painting I remember so well... it was so big!


And this... was so small! xD So much smaller than I imagined it to be...


I did my final art project in grade 12 on Edgar Degas... x)


The White House... It's so much smaller than I imagined!! LOL I don't know why I imagine things to be so much larger than they really are in real life... =A=


The Lincoln Memorial. By this point I was too tired out from the walking to climb up all the stairs. There were already lots of people camping there waiting for the fireworks happening later.


My view from the hotel in downtown Baltimore. People were trying to get to the harbour to see the fireworks. I was too tired to go, so I just watched them on TV... the ones in NY looked totally amazing. *_*

Day 4 - Pennsylvania + HOME!! Wake up call at 4:30am... I should be used to waking up early now without an alarm by now, right? OTL

We visited Penn's Cave. I thought we'd be spelunking but it was just a lame boat ride so I was kinda disappointed. The scenery around the area was really beautiful, although a bit eerie since there was no one in sight. Just rolling hills and farmland, that reminded me of Banff.


Coming out of the cave. It was interesting, because I've never been in a cave before... The smell of gasoline was pretty awful though... x_x

Got back home early... I'm so glad to be home because those 4 days were super stressful. T_T We did get an amazing tour guide though, I'm really thankful for that, but we were also unlucky in that we had to sit in front of a family of extremely rude people. With extremely rude little kids. For 4 days!! -_-" All in all, NEVER AGAIN. LOL...I'll go back to NY someday on my own cause I got some unfinished business there... but other than that... joining a tour just doesn't feel like a vacation at all. It's like the amazing race, only not so amazing and you're rushing to meet deadlines. -_-

Well. I'm done now. END OF STORY. Time to get back to whatever it is I call life. :D