recovery
Its amazing how physically draining and simultaneously intellectually energising a two week trip can be! I fell asleep numerous times whilst on the 5A bus from Dulles Intl en route to downtown DC – quite amazing that I did get off at the right stop, found the metro and made my way to the Hilton Capitol in one piece.
My visit to DC came and gone in a flash. Mission for Friday night was to find a WholeFoods outlet and eat something healthy. Then took an explorative stroll on my way back to the hotel where I drugged up on melatonin and embarked on an epic 9 hr sleep! Saturday morning was going to be too short for everything I wanted to do… and getting off to a late start didn’t help. There was some shopping on the agenda and then also snapping the mandatory pics of DC – just to ensure I never have to go there again.
Realised that the Americans build a memorial for every war they were involved in! The result: a lot of statues of “noble warriors” on green (copper) horses! They litter every public open space and have circles (roundabouts) dedicated to their existence. Other than that the place has a rather strange sense of architecture and even stranger people – certainly not as worldly as NY.
The most fascinating thing about DC is the street layout: streets running east to west are numbered using the Roman alphabet. North-south streets are numbered numerically and diagonal streets have special names. There you go, now you’ll find you’re way around!
I ended up in Georgetown (the nicer part of town) for some retail therapy: Diesel, Abercrombie & Fitch, Polo Ralph Lauren etc.
Started my journey back to Dulles around 14:00 (DC time), glad to be out of there & tired as hell. Not looking forward to the 18+ hr flight ahead. Arrived in Johannesburg more than 24hrs later with less than 3hrs of sleep on the flight – yawn. Sadly I couldn’t get my laptop powered up in the flight, so I befriended some of the air hostesses instead. We had a great time and I scored a bottle of premium class Moet for good behaviour!
Back at work on Monday and truthfully, despite fairly good sleep Mon & Tues was a bit of a blur. And then at 02:00 this morning I wake up – bright and breezy… damn jet lag. Nursing a dry cough... the path to recovery continues!
My visit to DC came and gone in a flash. Mission for Friday night was to find a WholeFoods outlet and eat something healthy. Then took an explorative stroll on my way back to the hotel where I drugged up on melatonin and embarked on an epic 9 hr sleep! Saturday morning was going to be too short for everything I wanted to do… and getting off to a late start didn’t help. There was some shopping on the agenda and then also snapping the mandatory pics of DC – just to ensure I never have to go there again.
Realised that the Americans build a memorial for every war they were involved in! The result: a lot of statues of “noble warriors” on green (copper) horses! They litter every public open space and have circles (roundabouts) dedicated to their existence. Other than that the place has a rather strange sense of architecture and even stranger people – certainly not as worldly as NY.
The most fascinating thing about DC is the street layout: streets running east to west are numbered using the Roman alphabet. North-south streets are numbered numerically and diagonal streets have special names. There you go, now you’ll find you’re way around!
I ended up in Georgetown (the nicer part of town) for some retail therapy: Diesel, Abercrombie & Fitch, Polo Ralph Lauren etc.
Started my journey back to Dulles around 14:00 (DC time), glad to be out of there & tired as hell. Not looking forward to the 18+ hr flight ahead. Arrived in Johannesburg more than 24hrs later with less than 3hrs of sleep on the flight – yawn. Sadly I couldn’t get my laptop powered up in the flight, so I befriended some of the air hostesses instead. We had a great time and I scored a bottle of premium class Moet for good behaviour!
Back at work on Monday and truthfully, despite fairly good sleep Mon & Tues was a bit of a blur. And then at 02:00 this morning I wake up – bright and breezy… damn jet lag. Nursing a dry cough... the path to recovery continues!
posted by Hennie at
10:10 am
