It had been 4 years since we took the kids to see the sights in Washington DC. Stu and I visited in January where we had freezing rain (see here) and said we’d go back in spring to see the cherry blossom. Unfortunately, due to Covid this didn’t happen so we decided Washington would be our last weekend away before the kids and I returned to the UK for the new school year.

It is a 3 hour drive from our home in New Jersey so we set off at about 10am. We had no idea how busy it would be so decided to just drive into the centre and worry about the parking when we got there. There was no need to worry – there was plenty of street parking along the National Mall so we paid for 3 hours (which was surprisingly cheap at about $6) and set off on foot to see the monuments.

It was relatively quiet although lots of people had hired bikes and scooters – which meant Izzy spent the first 10 minutes requesting that we hired some too – we didn’t!

^{Views up and down the Mall from where we parked}

We headed in the direction of the Washington Monument passing a row of food trucks on the way. We remembered the food trucks from our visit in January as we had been watching Food Truck Road Trip and were wondering whether they would serve similar food. They didn’t as mostly Kebabs and fries and all the ice cream trucks played very loud music!

At the Monument people were lying on their backs trying to either do Tik-Tok videos or Instagram shots. I tried to encourage Izzy to do one but she wasn’t having it, so we headed to our next stop, the World War 2 Memorial. The fountains had not been operating in January but they were back on now.

We then wandered along the Reflecting Pool towards the Lincoln Memorial. We tried to recreate a photo we took of the kids 4 years ago but unfortunately the water wasn’t as clear as last time – it was more of a green colour and also the pool did not seem to be full!

At the Lincoln Memorial we managed to get Izzy to ‘shuffle’ up the stairs. It took a while to convince her but we have her doing the ‘shuffle’ on all our holiday videos so wanted to maintain the tradition. Have a feeling this will be her last ‘shuffle’!

It was quiet at the Lincoln Memorial. I was actually able to get a picture of the kids with no-one else in it! We also commented that it was nice to visit Washington in a manageable temperature. When we visited 4 years ago it was over 30 degrees and we really struggled with the heat. Then in January it was just so cold.

We bought ourselves some drinks before visiting the Korean War Veterans Memorial and then Stu was desperate to see the Whitehouse. It is quite a walk but we humoured him and went. We could view it from the north side but on the south side it was completely boarded up so you couldn’t see anything!

Our feet were now hurting so we headed back to the car. We were going to drive to Arlington National Cemetery but it was closed. We thought about stopping at the Jefferson Memorial but the dome was being repaired and our feet didn’t fancy any more walking so we headed to Olive Garden for tea before checking into our hotel.

We were staying at Embassy Suites (Washington DC Convention Center) right in the centre of the city. Due to Covid the rates were really good. Our room was lovely – we had a lounge and a bedroom. There were also some pretty good city views and we could just see the top of the Washington Monument.

^{Views from our hotel room}

The next morning I had pre-ordered tickets for the Smithsonian Zoo. Although it is free, due to Covid restrictions it was necessary to have a ticket. The weather was due to be rainy but when we arrived it wasn’t too bad. We spent quite a while in the farm animal section – never seen the kids excited about cows, goats and donkeys before!

We then visited the tigers & lions and the monkey house. At this point the rain started to get quite heavy. However, Tom really wanted to see the panda bear. On our last visit it was the panda’s birthday so the queues were huge and we gave it a miss. This time because of the rain the panda decided he wasn’t coming out – can’t blame him really. One day we will see the panda!

We left the zoo, headed to Texas Roadhouse for lunch and then made the journey home.