More Starbucks mugs!

I visited three Starbucks shops today and at the third one I couldn't resist the temptation anymore. I just had to buy some mugs!

Like the white one from Dallas that I have, but in black...cool!

A new mug that is both a porslin mug and a travel mug...I will probably not use it as a travel mug, but maybe at home if I want the coffee to stay warmer longer!

Ghost piano

After the grocery store we went back to the fancy mall that we visited on Saturday evening. They have really good free wi-fi there so Bjorne and I were able to play some Wordfeud.

The piano in the background in the picture is playing all by itself. You can see how the keys move up and down to the music if you stand beside it. I haven't seen anything like it before. How do you even come up with the idea?

Bjorne and the playing piano!

Finally a grocery store!

Finally I was able to by some real food or whatever the stuff in the bag is supposed to show. I didn't find everything that I wanted though and almost missed out on the Wheat Thins since the box has changed from blue to yellow.

I couldn't resist buying som Canadian granola (even though I was looking for Vector cereal)!

Groceries

Great food at the hotel!

Before heading with the hotel shuttle bus to the closest grocery store (and the first we've seen) at 6 PM, we had dinner at the hotel and were a little bit surprised by how good the food was. There will certainly be more dinners at the hotel.

I just have to show a picture of the cute ketchup, mayonnaise and dijon mustard bottles we were given for our meals. Why is everything small so cute?

Cute, cute, cute!

Course

Today was the first day of our five day course that we are here for. We are taking the course together with 4 nice guys from NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency).

We were pretty happy to return to the hotel after eight intense but interesting hours. More to come tomorrow!

Esri's office, the second largest in the US after the one in Redlands (about 200 people working here)

Home made Starbucks coffee :o)

I used my very own Starbucks coffee maker for the first time this morning! So cute, but I must say that the coffee wasn't much to cheer for. I will try less water tomorrow. Maybe by the end of the week I will have produced the perfect cup of home made Starbucks coffee!

What a wonderful sight!

Confession...

We had a discussion yesterday while walking around the National Mall about wheather Washington D.C. is situated north or south of New York City.

I must confess that I was dead wrong...which is kind of embarassing. I still can't believe that Washington D.C. is situated south of NYC...it will probably take me a while longer still to accept that fact. :o)

Georgetown

This area of D.C. is quite different from the rest of downtown. Lower and smaller buildings. And finally some shops and restaurants with real food.

Bjorne outside the dinner place

Long walk!

We spent the day walking and staying outside in the sunshine as much as we possible could (which is apparent tonight, all three of us are red somewhere, my arms, Bjorne's neck and J.R.'s face and arms).

Our focus for our walk was the National Mall and Memorial Parks and we also headed over to Arlington Cemetery.

Last September Washington felt a pretty strong earthquake that affected this area so there is a lot of construction going on which meant disturbed scenary and detours since walkways were closed.

Our second goal for the day (the first one being the U.S. Capitol, a goal we didn't succeed fully with) was getting as close to the White House as possible. On our way there we were lucky to pass the Canadian Embassy (I had another Canada moment with singing) and the Hoover building were FBI has its headquarter (then I had an X-file moment instead).



Federal Bureau of Investigation



Canadian Embassy





Bjorne found his year!

Before finding the actual White House we found a visitor centre where you could look at bits and pieces from the White House (it's almost impossible to get a guided tour of the White House since September 11th). I almost couldn't resist buying a Lego model of the White House. It was pretty cool, but also pretty heavy and I need to prioritize the weight of my Starbucks mugs! After that detour we finally found what we were looking for!

White House



We got pretty close :)

Yeah, the White House! Happy happy joy joy!

This was the closest we managed to walk the Washington Monument. It shows from far far away so we didn't really feel like we needed to walk any closer and touch it :)

Washington Monument

Arlington National Cemetery is best known of over one hundred national cemeteries in the U.S. Its acres shelter remains over 320 000 servicemen and women, veterans from every war and major conflict in the U.S. history.

Grave stones as far as you can see..

Change of guards by the Tomb of the Unknowns, quite a weird ritual if I may say so...

Bjorne enjoying the throne at Arlingtons Old Amphitheater.

I found my letter at the Old Amphitheater

There is also memorial stones for the American space shuttles that didn't make it. Here is the one for the 1986 Challenger shuttle that exploded only 73 seconds into the flight.

John F. Kennedy also has a Monument here with a fire that is always burning.

Back at the National Mall we ended the sightseeing looking at the Korean War Veterans and Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Korean War Veterans

Vietnam Veterans Memorial (black wall in the background with all the names of killed soldiers during the Vietnam war)

Heading for the metro to take us to Georgetown and dinner we stopped at the Old Post Office Tower to get a nice overview over the city.

Old Post Office Tower

Bjorne infront of the Old Post Office

View of the National Mall from the tower

The tower also contains the Congress Bells





Lantmateriet

Lantmateriet?

I just had to take a picture of this truck that had something like Lantmateriets scale bar logo on its side.

U.S. Capitol

As you can see in the pictures we really really had a beautiful day. And even though the tour of the U.S. Capitol isn't until next weekend we took a walk around it before breakfast. Pictures looks so much nicer in sunshine!

U.S. Capitol

U.S. Capitol

U.S. Capitol with Bjorne and J.R.

Squirrels are everywhere in D.C. So cute!

Breakfast for champions! No really, but for a cutie like Quatchi it's more than enough. No new Starbucks mugs bought today. I just don't buy one to buy one. They need to look nice too!

Yummy!

Wrong day!

We had an early start to the day, taking a taxi to the closest metro station Dunn Loring-Merrifield at 7:30 AM (15 minutes drive) and then the metro to Capitol South where we were going to get a guided tour of the U.S. Capitol.

Bjorne and J.R. buying their metro tickets.

Except for som trouble buying the metro ticket and going to far on the metro we made it in time. The only problem was that the U.S. Capitol was closed on Sundays. It was then we discovered that our pre-booked tickets were for Saturday May 5th. Oh, well we got an early start to a beautiful day at least!

Bjorne and I on the metro heading for Capitol South.



Time difference

I did a really rookie travelling mistake going to bed. Tired as I was I didn't change the time on my iPhone before setting an alarm.

I woke up to the alarm and thought that those 8 hours I was going to sleep for went by a bit to quickly. I didn't realize my mistake until a few minutes later when I was looking outside the window and it was pitch dark. Luckily I didn't jump in the shower before!

Was I ever happy being able to go back to sleep for another 6 hours!

17th floor

We all got very large hotel rooms on the 17th floor with a quite nice view (I can’t complain being so far up, even though I would prefer more nature influenced scenery or more downtown scenery). Since 17 is my lucky number this week just have to turn out great!

My room

After checking in we headed to a near by mall with a shuttle bus to have some dinner. We were all too tired to go shopping though, being around 2 AM Swedish time.

When we returned to the hotel there was a party going on with great dance music. Even though I almost fell asleep on the bus back to the hotel I almost wanted to join the party. We thought it was a Sweet 16th party or something like that but apparently my favourite brand of clothing was celebrating something  Björne and I that attended a sale of this brand just on Friday thought about dressing up in the Peak clothes we brough and then attending the party. We went to bed instead!

Peak Performance?

Over the Atlantic!

Let me introduce one of my two colleagues that I’m travelling with: Björne a.k.a. my mentor at work!

Bjorne and I ready to fly!

We had a short flight to Copenhagen where we changed to the flight to Washington. Apparently it’s possible to change time of departure so that it takes place earlier than supposed to which was the case with the Copenhagen-Washington DC-flight. We had about 8 minutes to run from one gate to another. My third colleague, that I will call J.R. until I have gotten her approval to post her real name on this blog, managed to be driven the distance instead. It felt like we just made it but then we ended up taking off later than originally expected anyway (what a surprise)!

Quatchi doing som streching

Flying over Canada I had a bit of a Canada moment, singing the Canadian National Anthem and so on.

Oh, Canada!

The coolest new feature in the aircrafts Entertainment system was that you could follow the flight with live cameras that showed either to the side or straight down. Really really cool!

Camera showing what we are flying over

We arrived to a very green Washington DC, around 3.30 PM (spring has gotten a bit further here than in Stockholm). The weather wasn’t great but it was quite warm at least.

Our first experience of the city was the ridiculous transportation vehicles that moved people from terminal to terminal at the airport. I’ve never seen anything like it, but they looked like something from a sci-fi movie. I didn’t manage to take a picture of them though, but I’m sure that you will find a picture if you use Google.

Starbucks, Terminal 5, Arlanda airport!

I have wanted to visit the first Starbucks in Sweden every since it opened at the airport. Finally I managed to! I had a really nice quiet Caffe Mocha waiting for my two colleagues. And guess what! I bought this trip’s first Starbucks mug. I can’t wait to bring it home to my collection!

Caffe Mocha

My new mug!

On my way again!

Ready to travel!

Somehow I managed to finish packing and get to the airport in time for my flight. I had a melt down around 10 PM the day before where I thought that I would just not bring anything other than my passport. Raisins saved me! I finished packing around 1 AM and got about 4 hours of sleep before heading out.

Met Quatchi, my garden gnome!

I don’t know if everyone is familiar with the story of the garden gnome that was kidnapped and travelled all around the world with his kidnappers. I’m not sure I remember it correctly but I think the kidnappers took pictures of the gnome during the trip and sent home to the owner.

Even though Quatchi was given to me and not kidnapped he is my garden gnome

since last September. He came along on a road trip in Sweden back then. His purpose wasn’t clear in the beginning though, but all of a sudden I realised what his role should be! He made me very proud with lots and lots of “Kodak moments” during that trip!

Quatchi says hello!

And here we are! On the road again…not quite…but anyway. It’s Quatchis second trip and he couldn’t be more excited to be here!

For those you are wondering about his background I can tell you that he is a Sasquatch (google it if you don’t know) that was one of mascots during the Vancouver Olympics in 2010.



US, not as great as Canada but it's a trip!

Finally! Another exciting trip to blog about! This time the trip is not all about pleasure. The first week in Washington D.C. is almost all about work but the second week in New York City is all about vacation, vacation, vacation!

Time to get this show on the road! See you out there!

For those who know that I'm collecting Starbucks mugs, maybe you should comment and guess how many I will bring home this time!