Washington DC Trip - Part 1

Jim and I visited Washington D.C. in early December 2004 for a few days.  At that time we talked about going again some day, possibly with a family, and how it would be fun to fly into Ronald Regan Airport since it is right on the metro line.  It's been in the background of my mind for a while now, thinking our kids are at about the right age to go.  Ezra brought home some information from school about a trip there and when I saw the price I thought I could probably take our whole family for about the same amount.  So I started looking into airfare and hotels.  I was surprised to find affordable airfare around Thanksgiving time, and thought that would actually work well since the kids had the whole week off school and we didn't really have any other plans.  Jim took some convincing to get excited about it, and luckily our bosses were gracious to let us have the time off sort of last minute and our dog sitter was available too.  So we booked it and then had to work to get the boys excited about it.  Despite the last minute planning and lackluster response, we had a GREAT trip.

On Friday after school we took the dog to the sitter and drove down to Salt Lake City.  We got dinner at In N Out and checked into our very close to the airport hotel.  The hotel had inexpensive long term parking for our car and a hotel shuttle.  We tried to get to bed early as we had booked the shuttle for 4am for our 6am flight.  The airport didn't seem too busy, even with it being the weekend before Thanksgiving, and we had plenty of time in the airport to get bored.  We flew to Houston Hobby airport and had too long of a layover there.  The next leg of the trip got us to Ronald Regan airport.  We flew with only carry-ons to be able to rely on public transportation.  I thought we may need to use Uber at some point, but I had planned all our routes on the Metro and bus system.  At the airport we found the metro station and got our metro cards and added funds to them.  We took the metro to one station, changed to a different line to get as close to our hotel as possible and then had to walk about 2 blocks to our hotel.  We got to the hotel around 10pm Eastern time and check in was a little crazy as they had oversold our room type and ended up putting us in two separate King rooms that were across the hall from each other for the first night.  We were tired from our early morning and long travel day and got a good night sleep.

Big Nutcracker at SLC Airport

SLC Airport

Houston Airport

Ready to board to metro and get to our hotel

Stayed on the 13th floor the first night, view of Capitol building from hall window

We didn't really unpack since we would be changing rooms again and went down to breakfast.  There was a large breakfast area with lots of choices.  After breakfast we headed for the zoo.  We rode the metro and did some walking to get there.  One of the things we had wanted to see were the pandas.  We had heard that they would be going back to China in December and we were excited to get to see them before they went back.  The week before our trip we saw on the news that they had gone back to China, so we didn't get to see them after all.  The zoo was fun, but when we had gone in 2004 they had a hippo and giraffes, and of course the pandas, so it seemed like their collection has gotten smaller.  We ate lunch at the zoo and after seeing it all we headed back to the metro and rode to Arlington National Cemetery.  The metro wasn't the fastest way to get places, but it also gave us a nice chance to rest our tired legs after so much walking.  

Our route to the closest metro station

At Arlington Cemetery we went to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and watched the changing of the guard.  We also watched a family replace the wreath that was on display.  Then we headed back to the hotel because we had an Instacart grocery delivery being made and wanted to get our stuff moved to the correct room.  We were in a Residence Inn so that we would have a kitchen, sitting area, and separate bedroom.  We got settled and made some dinner.  After dinner we took a walk, stopping at the NASA headquarters across the street from and hotel and then to the National Mall to get a good view of the Capitol building.  After our walk the boys swam.  I had 21,686 steps that day and couldn't believe the boys wanted to swim.  They did spend most of their time in the hot tub.