After our train journey we arrived in Washington in the early afternoon, and headed off to our AirBnb to drop off our things. Because we only had about a day and a half in Washington we thought a walking tour would be a good idea. We booked one for the next day and then headed off for a bit of exploring.
Lots of people recommended a visit to Georgetown when you are in Washington DC, so we took their advice and headed over there. It's definitely a very cool area to walk around in, with the colourful houses making every road a sight to see. I loved walking around and choosing the houses I would like to live in :)
While walking around we stumbled across
Baked and Wired bakery, which I had read was a rival to Georgetown cupcakes so even though we weren't hungry we decided that we needed to pay a visit and get a take away cupcake. The bakery is so cute, and the cupcakes all have imaginative names. We went for the Unicorns & Rainbows cupcake, which I can confirm was delicious.
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| Baked & Wired |
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| Unicorns & Rainbows |
After checking out the area and a stop off for a pre dinner drink, we wandered around looking for somewhere to eat. Jeremy had a craving for mexican, and we stumbled on
Bandolero. The restaurant says it serves modern mexican and has mostly small plates, so we ordered a bunch of different things to share. The highlight for me was definitely the crazy corn, which was delicious, but all the food was super tasty.
The next morning we woke up slightly later than usual, and after changing our walking tour to an afternoon one, decided to have a slow start to the day. Washington DC is known for having an awesome food cart scene, so we decided to skip breakfast and go straight to lunch on the way to the tour. We stopped off on Franklin Square and were greeted by loads of food trucks parked along the road. There was a big variety of food types and it took us a while to figure out what to get. I eventually went for Mac n Cheese, which was good but not great and Jeremy had a falafel salad which was amazing!
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| Mac n Cheese from Capmac |
After filling our tummies, we made our way to the meeting point of the tour. Jeremy and I don't usually go for organised tours when we are travelling, we prefer to take our time seeing things on our own. But when there is a lot to see, or lots of history to learn about I think tours are a great way to go. We went for the National Mall tour by
Free tours on foot and I can highly recommend it. Our guide was very knowledgeable and it covered all the main sights on the mall.
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| Washington Monument |
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| WW2 Memorial |
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| WW2 Memorial |
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| Vietnam War Memorial |
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| Vietnam War Womens Memorial |
After arriving at our end point of the tour, the Lincoln Monument we realised that if we hurried we would make it across to the Arlington Cemetery before closing time. One tip: don't do the walk from Lincoln Memorial to the cemetery unless you have comfortable shoes on and time to kill, it takes a lot longer than you think!!
The cemetery itself is a working US military cemetery, which according to our guide has about 25-30 burials a day at the moment. It's easy to forget that every gravestone in the cemetery is a life that was lost, so I tried to remember that while walking through. The grave stones literally go on for as far as your eye can see. It's hard to describe the feeling you get while walking through the cemetery, it's peaceful and slightly eerie all at the same time. We also got to witness some tributes being laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, by some of the school groups that were there. The ceremony and care paid for each of these tributes was quite something to see.
After visiting the grave of JFK, we headed back towards the Lincoln Memorial to explore it properly as we didn't have time to do that after the tour. The statue itself amazing, at 5.8m tall and the has a great view of the Mall. It's also from these steps that Martin Luther King did his I have a dream speech, so it is a place of great history. On our way back home we stopped off to see the White House and say hi to President Obama! We were exhausted after all that exploring, so headed home for an early night.
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| The White House |
The next morning we woke up to rain, so headed down to the National Museum of American History for a look around. The museum itself is quite interesting and filled with artefacts from America. I especially enjoyed the food part of the museum which chronicles how America's food has changed over time. We then made our way to the train station to catch our train to our last stop on our tour New York City!
