Manda's Favorite Things: DC Adventure, Part 1

A couple months ago, my friend Sarah told me about some bus tickets she had found. Megabus had a great online deal--$10 roundtrip from Knoxville to DC. Umm....sign me up! We didn't really have a plan, but we decided a spontaneous trip to DC would be a fun way to kick off the summer.

I spent my first week of summer in Knoxville visiting family, and that Friday, Sarah and I loaded the bus. We loaded the bus at 10:00pm.

Sarah and I think this should be an ad for Megabus.
We might also be a little biased : )

Sitting in the front seat on the top deck.
We're still smiling because we don't know what's coming....

This was why we chose the front seat, top deck (as suggested to us by a friend).
We did have a wonderful view.

This was the point we realized we would be exploring DC on 0 hours of sleep.
Not exactly what we had planned.

About an hour into the trip, Sarah and I noticed a few problems. First of all, her seat was broken and would not recline. Mine did, so I offered her my neck pillow, but neither one of us was comfortable. Second (and by far the worst part of the ride) was the broken windshield wiper. There was a rubber piece, about 6 inches long, that had separated from the wiper. The wind would catch it, and it would whack against the windshield. VERY LOUDLY, I might add. Thump, thump, thump...all through the night. It might have been a little more bearable if it had been keeping a steady beat or maybe some kind of rhythm, but no. It was a very long ride.

The bus arrived at Union Station around 7:30am. I'm very thankful for my Google Maps app. If we didn't have a blue line to follow, we would have been even more lost! (Yep, I left the map of DC at home.) We had already planned on walking to our hostel because Sarah had read it was "close" to Union Station. We definitely got in our exercise that morning because it was a "close" 25-minute walk to the hostel. It did feel really great to stretch our legs after a 9-hour bus ride.

The hostel was actually in a great location. It was 8 blocks from the Capitol, 4 blocks from Chinatown, and 1 block from a taxi stand. And if we had known...only a $7 cab ride away from Union Station : ) Most importantly (for we were starving when we arrived in DC) our hostel was just down the block from a little French Crepe restaurant, where we definitely indulged.