Ryan and I went on a trip to Washington, DC just us in July! We haven’t really done that since we’ve had kids, so it was much needed and just wonderful.
Us at the airport, ready to head out. I haven’t been on a plane without kids for over six years. It’s amazing how relaxing a plane ride can be!
Our swanky hotel, The Mayflower. It had good access to the Metro and was pretty and historical. There had been presidential inauguration balls there and all sorts of cool things!
Our first meal in DC was from a food truck right near our hotel. We decided to try the shawarma:
First we headed to the American History Museum. There were tons of cool things to see, though I think both of our favorites was the giant flag that inspired the song “The Star Spangled Banner.” I also enjoyed the First Ladies’ dresses:
Revoluntionary war artifacts:
They even have a piece of the original Nauvoo temple!
A picture with Elmo, for the kids:
After a quick dinner we headed to see all the monuments, starting with the White House (which is actually way smaller than it seems in pictures, so it wasn’t quite as impressive as I was expecting):
The Washington Monument is so tall!
The Lincoln monument is super cool and awe-inspiring:
It was also cool to see the Korean War Memorial at night, it almost made it come to life more:
Alas, we never made it all the way around this lake to see the Jefferson Memorial up close, but it really is beautiful, even from far away.
We started all our mornings with nearby French bakeries for breakfast, which was also a highlight of the trip for me
The second day we headed straight for Arlington. We checked out the Arlington house, which I found super fascinating and possibly was my favorite part of the trip. Here’s the view from it:
Here’s the building at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, plus the changing of the guard:
Iwo Jima Memorial, which was also cool and giant in real life:
Arlington Cemetery, where it really hits home the cost of war. It was also interesting to see some LDS headstones:
After lunch we headed to the Capital building, where we got a tour from one of our Representative’s interns. Here is a statue of Freedom (I think?):
And some cool views of the domes:
We also got tickets to see both the House and Senate in session, though we only made it the Senate. We got to see four Senators present their thoughts, including Senator Rubio about funding to fight the Zika virus, and Senator Sanders about labeling foods as GMO or not. It was actually really cool to see how part of the process goes down!
That night we met with one of Ryan’s old high school friends and had some great Thai food.
The next day we went to the Natural History Museum:
We saw the Hope diamond, which actually wasn’t that impressive. It may be the biggest diamond, but it isn’t very clear or shiny.
They had lots of other gems and diamonds though, which were really impressive to me:
We got to meet up with our old roommates (who are married to each other) and I’m so glad we could! It was awesome catching up with them and meeting their youngest daughter. We also ate lunch from more food trucks with them. I got bangers and mash and Ryan got a BBQ pork/mac n’ cheese concoction.
After lunch we went to the Air and Space Museum:
I made sure to get a picture with the Tomahawk missile, because my dad always talks about how he worked on it back in the day.
And we got to see the Wright Brothers’ original airplane that made the first flight! So cool!
That evening we went to the Holocaust Museum, which was very emotional, horrifying, and very well done. Three hours was not enough time there, so we ended up going back the next day for a few more hours.
That evening we went to the Good Stuff Eatery- which was so good it may have been my favorite restaurant we went to the whole time!
The next day (our last) we started out with the Newseum, which was very interesting.
We saw a piece of the Berlin Wall:
And we saw Pulitzer prize photographs, a great view, artifacts from many news stories, newspapers from almost every year dating back to the Revolutionary Way (including a Nauvoo newspaper announcing Joseph Smith’s death), and Ryan got to try his hand as a news anchor:
That afternoon we went back to the Holocaust Museum, and once it closed we booked it over to the National Portrait Museum and Museum of Art. I liked the portraits of all the presidents and this statue reminded me of some I’ve seen in Winter Quarters in Utah:
We ate at a fancy Italian restaurant that night, and that was it! We headed out the next morning on an early flight. We had a really awesome time and I’m so grateful we were able to go on this trip just the two of us. A big shout out to my parents who watched our kids for us while we were gone! You rock!!!
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