Our school district had their spring break early (mid-March), so our trip to Washington D.C. almost seems like a distant memory. I will try my best to blog about our trip so that the memories last longer.
I booked a red eye flight on United out of LAX to Dulles on a Monday night in order to maximize our time. We used LAX’s new economy parking lot, which turned out to be pretty convenient. We reserved a spot online ahead of time and took a shuttle to the airport. The kids were excited to have screens on the back of the seats. Too bad I was the mean mom who would not let them watch any movies since our flight left around 11:30 p.m.! Once we arrived in D.C. at around 7 a.m., we caught the 5A bus from the airport to L’Enfant Plaza, which was close to our hotel. We dropped our bags off and started our first day in D.C. on probably around two hours of sleep!
We needed to grab some breakfast, so we stopped at West Wing Cafe. This was more a choice of convenience than anything else.
Our breakfast burritos and sandwiches were not bad, but not really worth seeking out.
Smithsonian Castle
After breakfast we started walking towards the National Mall. The first building that caught our eye was the Smithsonian Castle. The Castle serves as a Visitors Center and museum for all of the different Smithsonian museums.
This is where we first saw these orange statutes of notable women in history (I believe they were on display in honor of Women’s History Month). The statues appeared throughout many of the museums we visited later on in the week as well.
Washington Monument Tickets Fail
As we made our way to the Smithsonian Museum of National History, we had our first glimpse of the Washington Monument. I had tried to procure tickets to ride the elevator to the top through their online ticket system. This can be done one day before arrival, starting at 10 a.m. EST. I was logged into my recreation.gov account, with my finger on my mouse, ready to go. However, it was not meant to be, as the tickets were literally gone within 5 seconds! Thus, we could only admire the monument from the outside.