24 hours in Washington DC

After watching basically every TV series or film that is set in Washington DC, we couldn’t miss our opportunity to finally visit Washington while we were in New York over the summer.

Side note: I haven’t actually blogged about New York yet, even though we went in August – oops – but I find writing those longer posts a bit more time consuming and just haven’t found the time yet, as we obvs tried to cram soooo much into 10 days that it gives me a brain boggle trying to even write it down. BUT one day eh?

We decided to take a coach trip to Washington DC rather than drive ourselves as it turned out to be cheaper than hiring a car, and obviously someone else organises everything for you, bonus. This was super organised for us. Last year we only booked our hotels in different states and then figured out how to get there on the day we needed to travel.

The coach was lush and with only like 12 people in around 70 seats it was pretty chilled.

The tour guide was also hilarious, she kept telling us how much she hated work (while doing her job) and would often turn her phone off to ignore her boss. It was definitely the right choice for us to do the tour as we would never have managed to visit as many iconic sights if we had planned it ourselves.

Arlington National Cemetery and JFK’s Memorial

Our first stop was technically outside of Washington in Virginia, but it’s definitely worth a visit.

The JFK’s memorial and the eternal flame at the Arlington cemetery is really moving. The Kennedy graves are a lovely tribute to the family. The cemetery is unimaginable really; the white grave stones line the grass as far as you can see holding over 400,000 graves of military men and women from centuries of different wars

It’s a remarkable place, and a phenomenal tribute to those servicemen and women and in some cases their families who laid down their lives for their country.

Lincoln Memorial

We got about 15 minutes at the Lincoln Memorial, which was just enough time. There are deceptively more steps than there appears in photos, but running up those steps in the heat was worth it to see Abe.

It’s an incredible statue of Lincoln, it was also just slightly surreal to see it in real life as it’s in sooo many movies.

Washington Monument

I got slightly carried away with photos of the Washington Monument as we could see it from miles away on the coach. I probably deleted like 300 random photos with the little monument popping out in the back in the distance somewhere. But LOOK AT IT.

Again very surreal to see it in the flesh, I sort of imagined I’d see Captain America jogging around it saying “on your left”, but sadly not, *sigh*. If we had longer we could have spent longer in the park the memorial is in, but we had enough time to see everything and get the classic photo in the reflection pool so can’t complain!

The White House

So this is obviously a must in DC, regardless of the current person sitting inside it – pray for humanity.

Don’t be fooled by the serenity of the photo either… Protestors and the secret service stood outside and made it pretty difficult to get a photo of the whole building, especially since it’s actually quite small and hidden (on the street side) through the gates, fountains and surrounding gardens.

Also it’s just on the street in the middle of a built up area, like pops up out of no where from the back. I’d imagined it would be set back and far away from civilisation but nope, just down the street from the local shop. It was a lil underwhelming really, but probably mainly because I knew Josh Lyman wasn’t inside.

The Capitol building

The Capitol building was 10/10 my favourite spot in Washington DC and it kind of makes me want to be a senator to just go inside.

It was simply stunning. I haven’t edited these photos at all.

I would go back to Washington DC just to visit the Capitol Building again.

Smithsonian Air and Space Museum

Oh my days. Now if you’re not a geek, you probably won’t care about a few aeroplanes or space shuttles, but YOU SHOULD. The NASA exhibitions were insane, there were artefacts and shuttles from different Apollo missions, like space suits, pens, journals, engines – it was SO cool.

I was mainly super excited about seeing Amelia Earhart‘s plane, Lockheed, that she flew across the Atlantic Ocean in. I mean as the plane of the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic can you blame me?! I can tick that off the bucket list.

I also LOVED the gift shop because first, who doesn’t love a gift shop?! And second, they had a whole stand full of children’s books about women who changed the world – politicians, doctors, authors, nurses, pilots, engineers, and books of notable female scientists with gorgeous illustrations and brimming with facts to empower young women. GO AMERICA. I mean there were also books that stated the US won the First World War and several shops full of legitimate Trump merchandise (you don’t get that in the UK), so maybe not so much, BUT I’ll give them a little victory for their display feminist literature.

How would you spend 24 hours in Washington DC?