Washington DC

We finally made the trip to DC and New York this summer. It was a long awaited trip. The kids have been asking to go to NYC for a long time, but something or the other prevented us from making it happen.

This summer we planned it in the one week window we had where Somu & I could take a break and the kids didn’t have any classes yet. It was a super fun trip.

We took a red eye flight on Friday night to DC. We planned for two days in DC and then a week in NYC. My cousin lives in DC and my uncle & family live in Virginia Beach. We planned to meet them and spend the entire weekend with them.

We landed in DC at 9:30 am on Saturday. We hardly slept on the flight and were very sleep deprived by the time we landed. After collecting our bags, we changed and freshened up a bit, took our rental car and drove to DC. My cousin had made reservations for lunch. Since we had time before lunch, we decided to go around for a bit. The kids wanted to see the White House and so we went. As expected, the parking situation was bad. We had to park the car a few blocks away and walk. The weather was nice which helped.

We walked taking in all the sights and sounds of DC, looking at the tourists just like us. We walked about 5 blocks when we reached the White House. We walked through Lafayette Park and half way through walking there we realized Sanjay’s shoes were completely worn out and it was hurting his feet to walk. He said he needed new shoes, but never mentioned that the shoes were so bad. So we sat in the park while Somu went to get the car & Sarath went around taking pictures.

We then went for lunch and met my uncle and family. It was nice to meet them and talk while enjoying the yummy pizza and pasta. We all then rode the metro to go to the Air and Space Museum. Kids were excited to ride the metro and to be honest it was a nice change to go in the metro instead of the car. Sanjay was super excited. He had been looking forward to seeing museum. He must have taken a hundred pictures in there ?

We then went to my cousin’s apartment. Hers was a one bedroom apartment which was nice. It reminded me of the days in Milwaukee when I lived by myself in my apartment. This apartment was loads better than mine. We had tea and lots of snacks. Sanjay took a nap which was helpful. After chatting for a while, we went to the Capitol & supreme court. It was so peaceful sitting on the steps of the supreme court. Sanjay really liked sitting here and was not happy to leave the place. The kids were very excited to walk through those streets and see those buildings. We walked for a while and then headed to dinner. Sanjay was still a bit tired, but Sarath just went around taking selfies and having fun 🙂

Sarath loves history and so enjoyed all of this more than anyone else. He loved looking at everything and was very unhappy that we only had two days in DC.

Dinner at Bansari Indian Cuisine in Virginia was really good. Somehow even after all the snacks, we were hungry and stuffed ourselves. Fun conversations over food is always nice. We talked about everything under the sun from movies to colleges to family memories and fun family anecdotes. Wonderful time to cherish.

We headed out to the hotel to finally sleep. A nice warm shower was what we needed after the dinner for a restful night. We fell asleep instantly and woke up only after 10am the next morning.

The next morning it was almost noon by the time we got out of the hotel. We skipped breakfast and met our uncle & family for lunch. We went to Union Market which was a food court as we wanted to eat something quick and since food courts usually have multiple cuisines, it always helps to satisfy everyone. We had so much fun over lunch. We sat outside as the weather was nice and warm, but not too hot. Slightly windy which was just perfect. Food was yum and we took our own sweet time chatting and finishing our food.

We then decided to go to the Archives. We had to see the Declaration of Independence and other documents. We didn’t have time to go through the entire archives. We quickly saw the important ones and then got out as we had timed tickets to the Spy Museum. We bid farewell to my uncle and family and head out to the Spy Museum. It was about 15 – 20 min walk from the Archives. We got there just in time.

The Spy museum was amazing. There was so much to see and read and everything was as interesting as the one before that. If you want to look at everything in the museum closely, you will need about half a day. We thought we had enough time, but we probably only saw 50% of it. Then, we ended up spending about 45 min in the gift shop.

By the time we got out, it was about 7:30. We planned to eat dinner and then go to the National Mall. We had to walk back to our car which was parked a few blocks from the Archives. We were tired by the time we got back to the car. We drove around trying to find a place to eat and we found Chipotle – one of the best things to eat when we are tired and hungry. We got food to go and drove to National Mall. Once we finished dinner, we went to Lincoln Memorial first. What a beautiful place with all the lights and everything. We took our own sweet time looking at everything and taking pictures.

We had originally planned to leave early as we had to drive to Baltimore and were driving to NY the next day. Once we got to the National Mall, the kids just didn’t want to leave. We walked from the Lincoln memorial to the Washington monument. At the end, I too felt like it would have been nice to have one more day in DC. Hopefully next time when we go, we will go around leisurely and see all the stuff that we missed this trip.