Burnt on the 4th of July

My post about DC starts off in the evening of the previous post. We arrived to the Fairfield Inn after 18:00 and were all very impressed with the hotel. It was beautiful and the guy (Evan) at the front desk was very accomodating. He pointed out that they offer complimentary dinner, which we enjoyed immensely, after such a long ride.
After dinner we restocked on Mountain Dew and candy, and then it was time to hit the gym. The other boys (Dan and Tomasz) had already visited the gym in Jersey City, but they weren't satisfied with what it had offered. This time the gym had most of what you'd need, including free weights. I was so enticed by the treadmill that I joined them in their workout.

It was a brand new day and we found ourselves enjoying quite a healthy breakfast for a change. Every morning had meant sugar and fat and a bit of sugar on top of that, but this hotel offered oat meal, scrambled eggs and some kind of beef with salsa. Very nice!
We had decided that DC is small enough to cover on foot, so we left the car in the parkinglot and walked the 10km to the National Mall. I timed it pretty well (if I may say so) because we arrived 5minutes before the fourth of July parade started along Constitution avenue, in front of the White House.

The parade was impressive, started off by showing all 5 branches of US military aligned perfectly. We saw a lot of interesting floats, including a group of old classic cars (what we refer to as "yanks") and an actual "beautyqueen". The whole thing is a bit surreal to a Swede, since we don't have parades like that, especially not with someone standing on a piedestal where the only accomplishments are her looks...unless she's Lucia obviously -_-.

The heat during the parade  was excruciating. Standing in a sea of people didn't make the situation better. One by one, the boys fell away from the front line of the audience to take cover in the shade, but I fought on against our Lord's mighty sun in the sky in hopes to maybe seeing miss maryland again, but mostly because I felt I wanted to honor every participant in the parade by recognizing their contribution. It was very moving to see a very large group of hispanics dance around in some kind of traditional garb, because you could see how proud they were to be a part of it all.

After two loong hours, the parade ended, and I tried to walk over to the shade. Then I remembered that I'm walking around with an injured knee. Standing still in the same spot for 2 hours is NOT a great idea >_<. I could hardly balance my weight on it when walking around, so I limped over to the tree the guys were hanging around and parked my ass on the grass. It was wonderful to get some relief from the pain, but in the words of Arrested Development I thought "I've made a huge mistake". You see, I was _VERY_ sweaty. The pants (yes, I don't like shorts!) were very thin pants. What happened when I sat down? The otherwise loose thin pants came into contact with the skin and when I stood up, it looked like I had wet my pants =(. Not the greatest look when you have to walk around among other people.

We walked around in the National Mall and enjoyed seeing all the monuments (including The White House from far away, through cameras with 20x zoom) at the same time as we felt like we were burning up. The delicate swedish skin was NOT prepared for this kind of  sun, so we were all whining about the heat, even though nobody wanted the rain to show up, since that would've been worse.

The last stop was the Lincoln memorial. After that, we all decided to go back to the hotel to get away from the heat, and to rest our sore feet (from all the walking...). I just requested a small stop before we took a taxi back to the fairfield and that was at a certain clothing store that I knew would carry the kind of thin pants I needed as a replacement for the ones I was  wearing. H & M !! Tomasz was not too pleased with visiting the store. Apparently he feels that shopping at said store is beneath him, I mean "who buys at Hennes & Mauritz anyway!? It's all cheap crap!!" he exclaimed, wearing shorts he bought at walmart -_-.
Sadly, I didn't get what I was looking for, they didn't have pants in my size, so I had to endure the indignity of buying a pair of shorts. I am just simply not comfortable wearing shorts, but I accepted defeat and picked up a pair.

A surprisingly cheap taxiride later, and  we're all relaxing in the hotel pool....well, I say everyone,  but Tomasz went to the gym straight away. He stopped however after about 10min, not feeling the motivation. Instead, he went outside to enjoy the fireworks. We all got out of the pool and checked it out. For us however, the comfort from the heated pool won, and we jumped back in to nurse our bodies back to health for the next day's coming adventure - a 9 hour trip to Louisville, Kentucky!

ps, sorry, on a sketchy wifi-connection, will add photos later. Please do come by later to check them!