First we came to our friend Melissa, to Baltimore. We had a great walk there, rode the boat taxi and saw the old part of the town. That was a wonderful sunny day that we enjoyed a lot.

Baltimore is a nice city, where old architecture is mixed with the new one. But some ideas seemed to us just brilliant, like the old factory that was changed in to the book store. That was put into the interior of the factory with brick stone walls and old mechanisms that go well with modern technologies. Anyway, book stores are one of the places where we can spend a lot of time! So we prefer to pass them :-).

The same night we moved to the Yoel's (Melissa's boyfriend) apartment at the suburb of the capital of the U.S. All the next day we spent studying the sights of Washington DC. We liked the Mall, but were disappointed with the Washington Monument which is lack of any design and idea. Though from the top of it we had a look at the city.

The most impressive for me was the National Gallery of Art. That is a real something. I spent most of the time of two days we had there. There are so many wonderful works of art there. It even has one Leonardo which is the only painting of him in both Americas. Spending the rest of two days in the gallery, I still did not have enough time to visit the modern department of it.

Though we visited the Hirshhorn Museum and garden and I liked it so much. It is fun to watch modern sculpture and art and make guesses what's the idea and what influences it renders.

Sasha enjoyed the Air And Space Museum where we saw many real-size airplanes and other stuff, connected with aviation and space.

The next day of our visit we went into the Capitol, but it is so sorry you can not see it all, but just a small part of it including few rooms.

That days we had a good lunch at the beautiful Union Station (not far from the Capitol) where there are tens of departments with different cafes and fast food restaurants.

The last night we went to the Irish pub, as Melissa had a task at the university to listen to some native folk music.

We were so lucky to have such good friends in Washington DC and to stay with them. We also were pleased with the fact that all the museums and sight buildings are free of charge. That is a real treasure of culture that you can get absolutely free.