Days 22 to 24-Washington DC

Before I let Luke write the rest of this post, I have to say that we were really blessed by friends to stay in Alexandria, Virginia for 4 nights. Jan and Jeff were gracious hosts and let us park the RV in front of their house. They dropped us at the metro, and once even loaned us a car when they couldn't take us to the station. Our stay in DC wouldn't have been the same without them!

April 23rd was our first day in Washington DC and it was a long day. We started with a Metro to Federal Triangle. We walked to the White House Visitors Center in the rain. We got our National Parks Passports stamped and then walked to the White House. We walked all the way around it! We stopped to eat lunch just sitting on a low wall. It wasn't a great spot, but all the benches were wet from the rain.

Meanwhile, Across the street from the White House...There is some debate about the origins of the game we know as "ro-cham-bo" (aka rock-paper-scissors), but this statue built for the Revolutionary War General Rochambeau seemed like a perfect opportunity to engage in the classic game.

We got on the Old Time Trolley and Mr. History was our first tour guide. He was a former law professor, who decided to drive a tour bus when he was tired of his stressful job. He made history interesting! We passed by the Supreme Court, got off the trolley at the Capital Building and we walked all the way around to get our passports stamped.

We looked around in the Library of Congress and then walked back to the trolley pick up.

We got back on the trolly and were lucky enough to have the same driver. Mr History "LOVES" the Department of Agriculture building. We stayed on the trolley to Union Station where we found Roti Mediterranean for dinner.

We got Starbucks before we boarded our Monuments by Moonlight tour. This time our driver was Adam, self described as the handsome man with the good looking mustache. He was really funny. I wrote down some of his jokes. Maybe I'll tell you a joke when we get home. It was a wonderful tour, but it finished at 10:15 pm and we still needed to ride the metro home. We were so thankful that Jeff was waiting for us at the Van Dorn station. We crawled into bed in the RV just after midnight.

April 24th, our second day in DC was a slow morning because of our late night. My mom needed her wheelchair because we had walked more than 8 miles the day before. We took the Metro to the Smithsonian Station. Dad pushed her a few blocks to the Mall. We had our picnic lunch at the base of the Washington Monument.

We walked to THE Smithsonian. Ok. That's a joke from the trolley driver because there's like 20 of them. We went to the Natural History Museum. We spent most of our time in the gems and minerals wing. We all wanted to see the Hope Diamond. We took a few pictures and then walked to the National Archives. No photography allowed there...but how cool is it that we saw the original Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights & Constitution.

Off to the Pre-historic Era.

The next area we explored was ancient Egypt.

Next, we passed through the entomology section. Oh, Rachel likes bugs.

We could have easily spent an entire day here, but we wrapped up our time by peeking into a couple of the other areas before we left.

Next we went to the Air and Space Museum where we saw the original Wright Brothers plane. The one was saw in Kitty Hawk was a copy. It was aloso interesting to hear that the Wright Brothers were initially interested in bicycles-which eventually led to their discoveries in flight.

There were a lot of air place and space vehicles from many NASA missions over the last century.

After walking several miles through the City and the different museums we were all very tired and hungry so we started our journey back to Jan's house. After a quick break outside the museum, we took the Yellow Line to the Pentagon Station and changed trains to the Blue Line to home.

Once we arrived at the house, mom made eggs, sausage & pancakes for us while Jan put roasted vegetables and chicken in the oven for the adults. We watched Transformers 4 while the ladies talked.

April 25th was our third day in Washington DC. Back to the metro station...

We took the Metro to Arlington Cemetery and walked 3/4 of a mile to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to witness the Changing of the Guard. It's really a great reminder that freedom isn't free. We ate our Picnic lunch in the shade of the trees.

The Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

After lunch, we took a Trolley to the Vietnam Memorial.

We passed by the Jefferson Memorial.

It's a good thing my dad had bought this hop-on hop-off tour. Since mom was walking again, and really, we were all tired, we took another trolley to Starbucks for frappachinos to give us more energy. Mom got a leaf in her latte.

To end the day we took the green line tour of Georgetown and Embassy Row.

We had dinner at District Taco. This was a fun place that came about because the owners had started a food truck that became really popular. We took Metro Blue Line back to Van Dorn Station.

#Virginia #WashingtonDC