New Year's in DC

Dan and I had a great, relaxing getaway to DC over New Years' weekend. We booked our Megabus tickets early enough to get $3 tickets on the way out and $15 on the way back. Can't beat that! With a 15-20 minute stop each way, we made the 5+ hour trip to DC in about four and a half hours. The bus left on time each way and arrived well over an hour early each way. We had a great time and definitely plan to travel Megabus again.


When we arrived, we walked a block to the Metro (we packed lightly, only taking a small rolling suitcase), and traveled about 20 minutes to our hotel, which was about two blocks from a Metro stop. We planned our entire weekend around the Metro stops and found that it was freeing not to have a vehicle. We stayed in at the hotel on New Year's Eve, ordered room service for dinner (because it was late and most restaurants were closed), and were asleep before midnight. Haha!


We woke up early the next morning, enjoyed a delicious breakfast at the hotel, then headed out to explore the city. We were about the only ones around, so it was odd, but nice. We started out at the White House, which you can see very faintly in the background below. (My camera has issues... wrong dates often, and very washed out photos.) We walked around the ellipse to see the national Christmas tree, then headed to the side of the mall with the war memorials. We had visited DC in April and visited some of the Smithsonians on the other end of the mall.

The view of the Washington Monument from the WWII Memorial.

Vietnam Wall. Seeing all those names is always so sobering.

Lincoln Monument at the far end of the mall. Lincoln is a lot bigger than he looks on the back of the penny. =) I was probably in late elementary school when I saw this last.

"Freedom is Not Free" at the Korean War Memorial.

Jefferson with the "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." speech in the background.

We were a little crazy and decided to walk down the Potomac River to see the Jefferson Monument. The weather was so perfect, 58 degrees and overcast. We were able to peek into the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial that is being build and walk through the Roosevelt Memorial on our way. I had never been down that side of the tidal basin before. The Lincoln and Jefferson Monuments are just so immense. Pictures can't capture it. They are so hollow and cavernous, yet so full of history.

By this time we were really feeling pain in our feet from so much walking! We walked back around to the Smithsonians, because I hoped to eat lunch in this cafe that overlooks the skating rink and sculpture garden. Unfortunately, the cafe, skating rink, and garden were all closed for New Year's. Since it was almost 2pm, we just caught a quick lunch in the cafe at the Museum of Natural History.
Next we tried to take a tour of the clock tower at the old post office, but again, it was closed for New Years. We rested our feet at our hotel for a while, then headed out to Old Town Alexandria. We ate dinner at a delightful little french cafe and walked down King St. to the marina. After we ate, we walked up and down King Street, window shopping and enjoying the sparkling Christmas lights. A man was playing water glasses on the street. He had such a unique talent!

Sunday we woke up, enjoyed breakfast at the hotel again, packed up our stuff, and checked out. We headed out to Eastern Market, meandered through the locally handmade goods (with our suitcase! Ha!), and got a coffee at a local coffee shop. We had just enough time to walk the streets of Chinatown and eat lunch at Tony Cheng's, before heading over to our Megabus stop.

I loved this Starbucks sign in Chinatown.

By this time it was raining and cold, and we were really too early to get in line. So we headed over to the next block to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The extremely nice security guard let us store our suitcase in a closet instead of paying for a locker. We had about an hour to check out the portraits of the Presidents and a few other exhibits before heading to our bus.

The travel over the weekend went so smoothly, and we were able to see many more sights than we had planned. It was nice to get away and very nice to get home.