It’s official, pandas are the cutest animals on the planet. Seeing them at the National Zoo was soo much better than some years ago at the San Diego Zoo, where we had to wait in a long line, and then the pandas turned out to be sleeping anyways.
So I spent this past weekend in DC with my friend Eliza. I took one of the Chinatown buses, the “New Century Travel” one (2000coach), and it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible either. Tickets were $28 round trip, and while that’s pretty cheap, it still didn’t really make up for the cramped seating, the smell of the bathroom that wafted through the whole bus, and the chaotic manner of boarding the bus. Two weekends ago I went to NYC via Bolt Bus, and it was an infinitely more pleasant experience–boarding near 30th street station, left on schedule, clean and spacious seating, no bad smells, no loud rattling like the bus is going to fall apart, free wi-fi, and orderly (somewhat) boarding. Plus, tickets for Boltbus are cheaper than $20 round-trip (the price of Chinatown buses to NYC) sometimes–they can be as cheap as $1 if you’re willing to get up in time to make the 6:30 AM bus!
DC itself was a very nice experience, although the city seemed so empty. The metro is efficient and cheap, and sure beats Philly’s public transportation system. And even though apparently it’s starting to fall apart now with age, it looked pretty new and clean to me, but I guess that’s in comparison to Septa, which is a lot older. So on Saturday it was a kind of downcast day out, so we decided to go to the National Gallery of Art with our friend Eric (also from Swat). The special exhibit right now is “Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum in Kabul”. It was nice, but I kind of got the feeling that it was like a “oh well, we destroyed your country and now we’re going to make up for it by salvaging some of your art”, but it was interesting to see how Afghani art was so strongly influenced by Greek and Roman art. Post-art museum trip (admission is free, btw, another way in which DC one-ups Philly) we went to this adorable little bookstore/coffeeshop called Politics & Prose that I loved.
That night we watched this god-awful movie called “Fat Girls”, thinking that it would be hilariously bad, and it was–but almost painfully bad. The director/writer, Ash Christian, self-indulgently cast himself as the lead role, and basically fails on all three fronts. The sound and filming were bad, the script was bad, the acting was bad, the storyline was bad and full of already-done closeted-gay-male-living-in-small-rural-town-where-no-one-understands cliches. All in only 82 minutes.
Sunday was a day at the zoo, and then it was off to board the Chinatown bus again. This time it took a full 3.5 hours to get back to Philly because of the traffic, but I guess I would still take it again.
