Emily was amazing and watched our boys for three nights while we spent a long weekend in the Capitol. We love our kids to pieces, but it was so wonderful to be together and we are so grateful for wonderful friends (practically family) that we can leave our kids with and not worry for one second.
We headed out early Friday morning where I picked Brian up from his red-eye flight from a business trip to San Francisco. Brian has been a travelling fool lately---I think they wanted him to feel like he got two years worth of travel in over two months time!
After a quick, breezy 4.5 hour drive (anything feels quick and easy when you don't have kids) we stopped for lunch at one of our favorite spots:
Cafe Rio!
It was delicious way to start our weekend.
After getting to our awesome hotel in Crystal City, we headed out for the sites and didn't look back!
Jefferson Memorial
As we drove into the city, we saw people paddle boating around this memorial and really wanted to try it...It was a blast!
Cherry Blossoms
This was the second to last weekend of the Cherry Blossom Festival, but this is as good as it got.
Washington Monument
Lincoln Memorial
This stunning monument met and exceeded all of my expectations!
It is massive and his words that are posted all around are incredible.
Definitely one of my favorite things!
Next is a slew of pictures en route to The White House:
The White House
And our favorite discovery....
Capitol Bike Share!
We saw lots of people riding these around, and decided to try them out and ride them from The Mall back to our hotel in Crystal City.
We had to take the long way around, but it was totally worth it. It took us about an hour, but it was probably our favorite activity of the day!
As you can see we got to see the sun set...It was very romantic.
The next day we did the same thing...Go, Go, Go!
We really wanted to check out all the Smithsonian had to offer.
There was an awesome exhibit on photography in the Smithsonian House. It was so fun to read, watch, listen and learn about new things without kids. I was able to soak in a lot and take my time because I had no one to attend to. :)
Museum of American History
This was BY FAR my favorite attraction of the trip!
It was so interesting to me because most of it was stuff that I had learned about or heard of throughout my education. There was a section about all the wars America has had since her birth and I could have spent all day in there reading about all the details and individual accounts. I can't wait to go back there some day and hopefully spend a whole day roaming around!
We were somewhat selective about what we waited in line for, but the original Star Spangled Banner was definitely one of them. It was massive and awesome. I highly recommend it if you are ever nearby.
Haha! We thought our iPhones could do the trick, but it was a bit dark, obviously!
Museum of Natural History
This museum definitely would have been more fun with the kids, but we made our own fun and tried to send the pictures to Emily to show Thad.
He wasn't too impressed.
Next, we were off on our bikes again to check out the Capitol Building, have lunch and discover more of DC.
We rode our bikes up behind The Capitol to check out a restaurant from Diners, Drive Ins and Dives and absolutely fell in love with this part of the city. We totally understand why it is a popular, desired place to live!
The food here was to die for. We LOVE fried plantains and they are for sure the best we have had!
I don't like horchata.
I loved this horchata!
Fun little street fair going on.
I love when we run into stuff like this!
Capitol Building
Some people aren't way good at taking pics, but it's ok.
Why would I want my whole body and the ground in the picture opposed to having the entire building in it? Thank you for the picture, fellow tourist.
View of The Mall from the Capitol.
Air and Space Museum
(Sorry, it's hard not to be silly when taking pictures w/o kids)
This museum was also impressive and we hope to take the boys back some day!
Iwo Jima Memorial Statue
We actually happened upon this by accident!
We had mentioned we wanted to see it, but kind of forgot/ran out of time.
Well, it took FOREVER to ride our bikes back to a random bike port and as we made our way to Arlington National Cemetery, we found it! It was the perfect time of day to check it out.
Arlington National Cemetary
We wanted to see the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but didn't realize the cemetery closed. :(
Luckily we got some great views of it anyways!
How blessed we are to have soldiers defend our freedom.
We called it a night, hung out at the hotel and then headed home the next morning after a stop at the Washington DC Temple.
This trip was awesome and something we needed and wanted to do the whole time while living on the east coast. We are so glad we had the opportunity to check this awesome city out together and are so grateful to the amazing Russ family for making it all possible.
I really hope we make it back here when our kids our older, it is definitely a must see!
3 comments:
Fun pics. Love to see you working on your blog! X0
I loved DC! One of my favorites! And can you believe how clean their subways were?
PS come visit me.
Love it. I'm jealous you got to do all of the fun, active ways of seeing the sites! Those paddle boats looked tempting but my pregnant legs had enough. I have to thank you for the Tortilla Cafe recommendation--it was SO good! A second trip to DC is a must. There really is so much to see.
So you're sick of Utah by now, right? Because we're ready to have you back. I have to post the pictures we took the last night you were at B&C club. They are hilarious.
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