Our trip to Washington D.C. was in a word - exhausting! We did SO much in our 2 days there. I feel like we need to take another trip back to explore the city since we really only had time to do the touristy things. Jason and I were talking and I think we literally walked between 20-25 miles in two days.
We got in late on Thursday night after grabbing the Amtrak to get to Union Station in D.C. Taxis - The only annoying thing about our time there. First, they only take cash - fair warning! Second, everything is negotiable. They didn't have a meter and would just pull a number out of thin air. We used the fine art of haggling in these situations.
First thing Friday morning, we walked over to the Capitol area and made our way to the Library of Congress. This might be the most beautiful building we went to in D.C.
Next, we went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum where we got to see the original Wright Brother's plane (with new canvas). This was Jason's favorite place we went, especially since he works for Southwest. They had everything from rockets to astronaut gear, airplanes to balloons.
This was the day that we walked to ALL of the monuments/memorials along the National Mall - Vietnam Veterans, Lincoln, Washington, World War II, Korean War, MLK, and Jefferson. This was my favorite part of our trip! We walked until pretty late on Friday, which might have been a bad idea. Our feet were SO SORE! The monuments at night were amazing though, so it was definitely worth it! We grabbed a quick dinner at Z's Burger where we had some great hot dogs and shakes - simple and delicious!
The reflection pool was drained for renovations
The Jefferson Monument at night
We woke up pretty early on Saturday morning because we had reservations to tour the Capitol. We got to walk around the old House of Representatives and Senate halls, so this was really cool! I don't know NEARLY enough about American history, but it was really interesting being in the place that so many important things were decided.
After that, we headed to the National Archives, International Spy museum, another Smithsonian - the Natural History museum, and the White House. We even got to see Obama's motorcade pulling into the White House :) One great thing about D.C. is that so much is free; all of the Smithsonians and all government buildings. We finished the day in the Penn Quarter area where we grabbed some sushi and champagne at a place called SEI. It was a great end to our time in D.C.
As you can see in this picture, we were SO bundled up. It was in the 20s with 30 mph winds. Our next vacation will be to a beach for SURE. One amazing benefit that I forgot to mention is that Southwest owns Airtran now. We can also fly standby on Airtran and go anywhere they fly. This includes the Dominican Republic, Aruba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and more.
As a side note, we ran into our first standby travel problem. We got stuck in Houston for around 4 hours since one of the flights back to Dallas got cancelled. We were in the top 10 on a list of over 80 standby people...unbelievable! I feel really bad for those people further down the list. I'm not sure if they even got out of Houston that night.
Our next travel is in a month since I will be running my 10k during Jason's next available travel weekend. Not sure where we're going - any suggestions are welcome. Look for a few more posts between now and then. Thanks for reading!
I feel very patriotic after spending the weekend learning about our country's history. It's one thing to read about it in a text book, it's another to stand on the exact same spot that so many presidents have been sworn in, or to see the actual declaration of independence and constitution.
ReplyDeleteDid you know:
1) The dome on top of the capitol building is cast iron and has been painted to match the rest of the structure?
2) We were told that only 1 person, Roger Sherman was the only person to sign the declaration of independence, articles of confederation and the constitution? Although internet searches tell me that the tour guide was a liar, apparently so did Robert Morris.
3) MI6 (England's foreign intelligence division) has a counterpart division that deals with internal intelligence named MI5.