So I left at a respectable time from Philly, since travelling I have been sleeping more, this could be due to walking and driving for long hours at a time and being always on the go. I've tried to not set my alarm and just see what naturally happens and over the months I have been sleeping on average about 8 hours a night which is a luxury for me, it's nice not being ruled by an alarm clock.

So when I left Philly it was about 15 degrees, lovely weather, was in my t-shirt the whole way and was an easy drive through some beautiful parts! Only traffic I encountered was coming into Washington DC. On the way to Washington I drove through Bel Air, didn't see the fresh prince though!

So I get to the hostel at about 3 and meet a girl called Nora who has been sent my details through Amin who I met in Ottawa. She meets me and takes me around Washington to see the sights. Washington is a lovely city, no massive high rise buildings, all the streets are wide with lots of space to see everything and it's nice to walk around. I go and see Capital Hill, The Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the White House and walked down the Mall which has a lot of the Smithsonian museums. The majority of the museums here are free and there are a lot of museums and monuments to see.

That evening I decide to head to the cinema in Chinatown which is round the corner and stuffed my face with popcorn and watched Gravity.

That night I was not well at all, had a really restless night and felt sick the majority of it and woke up feeling the same way. This is the first time since travelling that I felt genuinely sick and was a bit worried about how long this would go on for as I was only scheduled to stay for another 2 nights. All morning I kept feeling faint or thinking I was going to throw up. I believe this has finally come down to my poor diet, most days I'll have some porridge in the morning, a sandwich at lunch and then something hashed together for dinner but the previous night my dinner had consisted of popcorn and I spend many hours a day walking around, so obviously not getting enough for the body.

So I booked another night in the hostel just in case I was coming down with something, and decided to plough on as I didn't want to miss out on a day in the city. So I headed to the Library of Congress. Lovely place and I love books but they have exhibitions of other things in there, I decided to join a tour (I've done so many tours now, I have become quite accustomed to tagging along with random tours as they all seem to be free here) and be shown around the library. Well the lad was so boring and I also felt so ill that I had to sneak off to sit down all the time as I kept thinking I was going to throw up in the library of congress!!! So I left in the end for some fresh air and I was supposed to meet another of Amin's friends but had to cancel as I just felt so rubbish.

So I thought I would try another museum and see how I got on and headed to the air and space Smithsonian museum and it was brilliant, I went into a space station and was reading up about all the shuttle launches and the universe, great place!

On the way back I headed to the supermarket and randomly bumped into Kaitlin who I met in Ottawa, what a small world, so we planned to meet the next night for dinner!!

The next day I was so happy to wake up feeling absolutely fine, I had however slept 10 hours, I had felt so awful that I had fallen asleep quite early but obviously needed it! I headed to the National Archives to see the declaration of independence and the American constitution, I felt again like I was in National Treasure. So many places I've been to remind me of films and I can imagine I am going to spend a lot of time watching movies thinking 'oh, I've been there', like today when I was walking near the Lincoln Memorial I kept thinking of Forrest Gump!

After I headed to the Natural History Museum (again all free, I didn't go into anywhere that cost money, this was great). As people on Facebook saw I had a few troubles with all the kids coming here on school trips to the museums but was still great fun!

That night headed for Chinese with Kaitlin, making sure I am getting adequate food into my system and she randomly bumped into some old Uni friends who we joined for dinner, it was so nice to spend some time with people, I have found that I can go many hours not speaking to anyone and the times I do it's just to ask for directions!

The last day in Washington DC I headed to the Arlington Cemetery which is an impressive and sombre sight, rows upon rows of little white grave stones of more than 300,000 military personnel and family and this is where they have the tombs of the unknown soldiers. Soldiers who have not been identified from so many wars, they have a guard there around the clock and they do a changing of the guard every hour on the hour which for some reason I got quite emotional about. What I think made it worse was that they were actually burying a young solider that day in the cemetery, they had the coffin being drawn by horses and a military band marching with them. I also went and saw where J.F Kennedy was buried as well.

In the afternoon I went to the American History Smithsonian museum and learnt about all the different wars of America, The building of Ford cars and even saw the Ruby slippers Dorothy wore in the movies.

Loved Washington, was a good 4 days here! Now here comes the South!!