Washington DC Trip

As usual, I'm way behind on my writing but I have to write about our Memorial Day weekend to DC.  It was so much fun - too quick and we didn't get to see everything but it was still fun!
We chose D.C. because it is close and affordable.  All the places I had on my list to visit were free so how could we pass it up?

We left on Friday morning and got to DC in good time.  We decided to visit the zoo first, which was baby girl's choice.

Here are lots of pics from our walk through the Smithsonian's National Zoo

It was hot and some animals were nowhere to be found, but we had a good time.  There are other tours you can sign up for, but we were happy just being on our own and wandering around.

When we were finished here, we headed to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

This was another one of baby girl's choices.  She learned a bit about this in school and was very interested in visiting this museum.

I didn't take many pictures here and honestly going through the exhibit Remember the Children, Daniel's Story was a bit depressing.  Don't get me wrong, it was a great learning experience and it made it so real.  You can understand a bit better all of the fear and suffering that kids experienced during this time.  This exhibit really captivated my daughter, who is 11.  She would stop to read every page of Daniel's diary that was spread out through each room we walked through.

It was sad, but a great learning experience.  It definitely shouldn't be missed.

There is an area of exhibits where you need an admission ticket and these are given out early in the morning or reserved online.  The tickets are free, but to ensure that they don't go over capacity, they require these tickets for admission.  We didn't plan this very well, so we couldn't get into that area.  It has been added to our next trip to DC since there was still more we wanted to see.

When we were done, we walked around for a bit and stopped at the Smithsonian Castle to plan the next day.

Our first day in DC was great.  Lots of walking which was both exhausting but nice!  We parked in a nearby lot, and everything, with the exception of the zoo, was within walking distance.

Tomorrow will be similar - we will park and walk to the museums. Tomorrows picks are: National Air and Space Museum, National Museum of Natural History & maybe National Museum of American History.