Day Eight & Nine – 23rd – 24th March 2007

We hired a car for the trip to Washington DC. The trip to Washington DC took about four hours. The traffic was slow moving throughout the journey due to congestion. We left Redbank only at about half-past-one instead of the ten o’ clock, we had planned earlier.

We initially ended up going to the wrong hotel in Washington, with a similar name (I had printed out the directions, using maps.google.com , but although I had the correct address, the directions were to the wrong hotel). Finally, after further enquiries, we landed in the correct hotel. The receptionist was a Nepalese guy, named Bharath. He was friendly and we checked in to our rooms. After having having a shower we decided to have dinner and see a few places that night.

We had a buffet Chinese dinner (at $12.50 per person). Buffet dinners (you can eat as much as you want), seems to be quite popular here. After dinner, we followed the maps that the guy at the hotel had printed for us. After getting lost a number of times, we finally managed to reach the area where the Washington Memorial was. Here we parked the car and walked to the Washington memorial, the Second World War memorials and a few other memorials. There were memorials everywhere, one for each of the wars and a number of memorials for the presidents. Fortunately, there were all located quite adjacent to one another and can be reached by foot.

We decided to get back to the hotel and walked back to the car. It took some time and still more walking as we forgot where the car was. We started panicking, but after some more walking, we managed to find the car. We decided to get back to the hotel, which was about 30 minutes away. But it took us nearly two hours to reach the hotel as we kept getting lost and John who was driving the car did not want to stop and ask for directions. And, we had forgotten to get a print out of the way to get back to the hotel. Following the directions in the reverse order did no work.

Finally, we stopped at a gas station and I asked a Sikh taxi driver, who was parked there, who gave us the direction which finally took us to the hotel. An unforgettable night, really.

By now, my stomach had started rumbling. A cheesecake, which I had consumed on the way to Washington has caused food poisoning and I was feeling quite sick.  I had travelled all over India, without getting food poisoning and  I did not expect to get one in USA and hence I had not prepared myself by bringing along some anti-diarrhoea tablets. I went and bought some Mylanta tablets, which I took before going to bed. I got up in the middle of the night with severe diarrhoea. At 6.00 am I went to the pharmacy again (which was open for 24 hours a  day) and bought some Imodium tablet and took a couple of them to stop my diarrhoea.

I stayed in bed till about eleven, before we continued our sight seeing. We saw the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Korean War memorial and a few others, before going to the Natural History museum. By now, we were quite tired (we would have walked at least 10 km that day) and decided to get back to the car and drive home. We reached home at about 9.00 pm and went straight to bed. It was a rushed and tiring trip indeed. We should have stayed in Washington for  at least for another day, but we had to come back because I was flying to Texas the next day top attend the SITE coneference in San Antonio.

Day Six & Seven : 21st 22nd March 2007

Again, stayed home most of these two days in Redbank, New Jersey.

Redbank, is a small town, an hours train journey from New York and not too far from the Newark airport, giving access to many other cities in USA. We decided to make this our base and travel to various other places in order to save the expenses of living in expensive hotels, which we could not hasve afforded.

Redbank had a very large population of Latinos or Hispanics ( Spanish speaking South Americans from Mexico etc). In the state schools here, they make up ninety percent of the student population. In a few years, it is expected that the population of Hispanics would overtake the population of the non-Hispanics. On a train journey to New York, all the passengers were Hispanics. Most of them stay in Redbank and work in New York, to save on rental accommodation and other expenses. However, accommodation in Redbank has also gone up in recent times.

The weather over is very pleasant, unlike when we landed here a week ago. All the ice and snow had melted away, leading a place that looks entirely different.

The houses are quite different over here. Almost all houses are double storied, probably to maximize floor space. Most houses are quite small and are white or pale coloured and looks very pretty, in neat rows. However, there are houses that are enormous and probably owned by rich business people.

The income for the town comes mainly from people working in New York, commuting daily from here. There are no industries or farming going on here. But, there are some huge shopping centers, with all the usual American businesses such as Borders (largest I have seen), Barnes and Noble, Macey’s, and  Target.

On the whole the prices of goods are quite cheap here. Clothing is  considerably cheaper here and so is all types of food items. But I don’t see a lot of shoppers or shopping going on. Probably the recession is affecting the shopping habits of people. The residents here are also complaining about the high rates and taxes that they have to pay. The cost of schooling (most preferring to send their kids to the better private schools) is also high. Some are also planning to migrate to cheaper states such as Maryland, because of the lower cost of living there.