Day 30: Last night in the United States

Drive of the day (map): 

Last full day in the United States, for now. We have found our way to a small airport hotel next to Baltimore Washington International Airport. The car has been completely emptied and we are more or less done with all packing. We are ready to leave the country that has hosted us for good and bad the last 30 days... and we are all looking forward to getting home..

We have spent the last day doing some last minute shopping - all with different needs - and another college football game. This time the less fancy University of Michigan versus Duke. Pretty fun, but not as cool as the Michigan game.

All in all a pretty relaxing last day in the states...

I will do some more blog posts when I get back to Norway. Here are some of the topics that might be discussed to some degree...

1) What have we learnt about the United States
2) How do we perceive the United States after this trip
3) Evaluation of the road trip - success/failure?
4) Sverres ten tips for a great road trip
5) Eating you way through america
6) Suggestions???

Photo summary

Here are the links for all photos again:

Photos have been added to the albums almost every day:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=518575&id=657165614 (194 pics)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=526493&id=657165614 (194 pics)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=544766&id=657165614 (190 pics)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=545560&id=657165614 (160 pics)

Thanks to Erlend for great photos and being a true paparazzi

Day 29: Last day of sightseeing...

Our last day of sightseeing! Tomorrow is set of for last minute shopping and University of Maryland vs. Duke in football....and then we are off.

Washington DC is different from New York in oh so many ways. While New York is fast paced with lots and lots of tall buildings and crowded streets - Washington DC is more greek/roman inspired with plenty of monumental buildings and memorials. Walking through the Mall - great place - gives you in some ways the same feeling you get walking through Rome (only that the Mall has a short and rather insignificant history compared to Rome).

Most of the monuments and memorials were larger than we actually had anticipated. The Washington Monument is one tall obelisk, Lincoln is pretty big sitting in his chair at the Lincoln Memorial, the are 760 000 graves at Arlington Cemetary and the Iwo Jima Memorial (the guys with the flag) was freakishly large (the only thing smaller than expected was the White House). Only thing about walking around seeing all these monuments is that your feet start to hurt... but again we were extremely lucky with the weather. There were no longer any remnants of tropical storm Nicole and the sun were yet again out and shining. Could in no way ask for better weather for sightseeing...

After doing our tourist obligation and seeing all the sights we god some food at M&S Grill downtown. The food was decent, but we got the worst service ever - and tipped an impressive $1,16 - in small coins :p

The recommendation of the day is to go and watch The Social Network. It is a fun, entertaining movie that gives your the story of the founding of Facebook. Good young actors and a well written script makes us all agree that this is the best movie of 2010 so far. Run to the movie theater.