We took a quick trip to Washington DC two weeks ago. Summer is flying by, and I am not sure if Josh will be around next summer so I am trying to soak in as much family time as possible. Jack had to work late a few nights and one Saturday so he got a couple of days off so we went. The good part about DC is most everything is free (except for the Bible Museum). We stayed in Alexandria and took the metro which was across the street into DC every day. I enjoyed Alexandria because it was a cute little area. There was a free trolley that took you down the street and to the waterfront. We enjoyed doing that each night. We got into DC around 2 (after getting to the hotel and buying metro tickets) and went to the Smithsonian museum. We were pretty hungry after that and traveling all day that we went back to Alexandria. We got up early Friday to get in line for tickets for the US Bureau of Engraving and got tickets for 9:45. We really enjoyed this tour. It was fun watching money getting printed and watching the entire process. Right next door was the Holocaust Museum. We had tickets for that for 11:30 (it was just to reserve our spot....didn't cost money). I must admit, I was pretty disappointed by this. It was literally wall to wall people because they let about 150-200 people in at each allotted time (which I think is every 15 minutes). You couldn't really look, but then again it was a ton of videos and a TON of reading......which I really didn't like. The kids and I really went through quickly and left Jack behind. I did like a few parts......actually displays of the ways they got to the camps, the places they slept, etc. They also had a place where you could go in and open this book and follow along as different people gave accounts of what they went through. I liked that part and stayed there for about 30 minutes. That took us about 1.5 hours.....Jack maybe 2.25 hours to get through. We have been to DC before, but never to those two places. We hopped on a bus and went to the Lincoln Memorial and rode around DC for a little bit before heading back to the hotel. Saturday we went to the Bible Museum. I was told that I should plan for 2 hours, but it took us a half day!! They have 6 floors. Top floor is just restaurants and the fifth floor didn't have much. The other floors had a lot. Again, some of the floors had a lot of reading. The fourth floor especially was like that. We started there and it took us over 1.5 hours!! The third floor was fast, but I enjoyed that. It had Bible scenes and it also had Bible looking characters giving information. Jack wanted to do some of the presentation things, but I also wanted Jenna to go to DC cupcakes (really Georgetown cupcakes but when the show was on it was DC cupcakes). The four of us took an Uber (first time) and got over there and then came back to get Jack before heading home. I am glad she got to do that. There is so much in DC to take in and I know after 2 trips we still have not seen it all.
