First of all, getting to DC from Connecticut by car inevitably takes longer than it should. It should easily be done in under seven hours, even with a couple of stops. When you leave in the afternoon right before a long weekend, it's about as bad timing as possible. It took us about ten hours, a large portion of which was spent in traffic in New Jersey, followed by night construction in Maryland, something that really needs to be rethought on a holiday weekend. Just saying.
My kids, 6 and 9, can be great in the car or they can be awful. All in all, they leaned towards great with bursts of awful on this trip. Given how absurdly long we spent in the car and how late we arrived at our destination they did better than expected. Along the way, we really only made two stops - one at the Molly Pitcher service station in New Jersey, and another at the new Delaware Welcome Center. At Molly Pitcher, we grabbed some snacks and drinks, including Starbucks coffee that had a long, slow-moving line. We also did calisthenics. We looked like tools and didn't care. I jogged around our car in the parking lot several times. We did family stretching. It was fun and funny and memorable. Probably pretty funny for the people who saw us. Or just scary, hard to say. DWC was just pit stop for a bathroom break.
The other aspect of driving that I have to comment on is that we drove our Prius and ended up spending, round trip, about the same on gas that we did on tolls. Yes, tolls. Around $50 for each. Still, compared to flying, we saved a boatload for a family of four. But for a solo trip or even a couple, it's not as obviously a savings, especially if you don't drive a Prius.
We got to our hotel, the Crystal Gateway Marriott, just before midnight. Absurdly, we had to wait a good ten minutes to check in since there was a line. At midnight. Also, only a few employees. My husband's parents planned to fly down and join us on Friday morning, so I had called ahead to get connecting rooms. The woman I spoke with had assured me, repeatedly, that this would not be a problem. Well, guess what problem I was dealing with at midnight? Ultimately, they solution was that they would put us in a room that night, then move us the next day. It was a hassle, but not a huge deal.
Kids getting rowdy in the lobby while we waited to check in - at midnight. Pro tip - if you want to get quicker service somewhere, let the kids get a little extra wild and they'll do their best to rush for you. My kids are always happy to accommodate.
"official" Day One - because ten hours in the car is not vacation
The next morning, after some snacks in the room, we packed up and moved to the clear other side of this hotel. As we walked through the lobby, we ran into my in-laws who had managed to fly into Baltimore, take the train to DC, then take a taxi to Crystal City (which is part of Alexandria, VA, just across the river from DC) in the same time it took us to eat breakfast and pack up our shit.
The nice thing was that the connecting rooms included a suite with a king-sized bed, a pull-out sofa, and a cot. It was connected to a normal double room. This was a perfect set up for us. Overall, the hotel is clean, housekeeping was good, and we were always treated very well. We did need to wait for ages for them to bring bedding for the pullout sofa, which was odd - usually, extra bedding is in the closet or something when there is a pullout bed.
After we all dropped our stuff off and relaxed for a few minutes, we headed into DC. One real point of attraction about this hotel is the proximity to the Metro. One does not even need to go outside! The weather was beautiful, so going outside would have been fine, but it does make things a bit more simple for getting around. We all headed down to the station, grabbing a map along the way. Dealing with purchasing Metro cards was always a challenge, and the instructions on the machines did not make it any easier. I also initially struggled to figure out the cost of a trip, but once I got the hang of the fare chart, it was pretty straightforward. Both the yellow and the blue lines run into DC, and I made the mistake of having us hop on the blue, which is the much longer trip. In my head, it was the same, but turns out that was wrong. Oh, well, live and learn.
We took the blue train to Smithsonian stop and exited out into the bright sunshine of the Mall. If you're a tourist in DC, this should always be your first stop on the Metro. It's so majestic to walk out and be surrounded by these historic and beautiful buildings. One thing that surprised us, though, was that this part of the Mall seemed to be fairly grassless. It was looked very downtrodden. I speculated that they have a lot of events and just can't keep it green. We decided to walk towards the Washington Monument, which while the scaffolding had been removed, was still closed for construction and repairs due to the 2011 earthquake that shook the east coast. It was felt in CT, but no one in our family felt it.
On the monument end, the grass was much nicer. We pulled out gloves and ball and got a game of catch going. Or at least my husband and son did. The rest of milled around and relaxed, taking in the sight of the Lincoln memorial just beyond the reflecting pool and the beautiful spring weather. Eventually, we decided to move along and find some food. We also needed a bathroom for my daughter, which was not an easy solution. As we walked back towards the Capitol, we had to dash out of the way of a huge motorcade as it passed through. It appeared to be connected with the Naval Academy. Such an unusual sight for us, but probably very common for locals.
Hanging out on the grass by the monument
We decided to go into the Museum of American History for the cafe and bathrooms, but the line was incredibly long to get it. Ultimately, I found a man who got my daughter and I in another entrance just to use the bathroom. It was a very nice and helpful. By the time we were done, we joined everyone else in line and since they were almost in by then it all worked nicely. We were really only there for the cafe, which I had read good things about on Yelp. While there were other, better options, all of them would have taken longer to get to and several were already past lunch hours.
The cafe was fine. Nothing to write home about. But I'll blog about it anyway. My husband and I shared a chicken Cesar wrap, and my mother in law got her own which we fell on like vultures when she didn't finish it. The kids both got hotdogs. My father in law, who is a vegetarian, got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It was overpriced, but at least each meal came with fruit.
Had we been smart, we probably would have stuck with this museum, which I am sure has a lot of great exhibits to offer. Instead, we went next door to the Museum of Natural History. For the dinosaurs. After waiting in another long entrance line (this is due to security and bag checks), we finally got in to discover that it was pretty much wall-to-wall people. I am not great with crowds, I get irritable and anxious that I am going to lose the kids. We did walk around and try to see most of the rooms, but it was definitely an abbreviated tour. It was difficult to stop and enjoy any particular thing, and given the kids' boredom, my irritation with the crowds, and all of our collective exhaustion after having gotten little to no sleep, we decided to call it. We made our way back across the Mall and this time hopped on the yellow line at L'Enfant Plaza.
"America's T-Rex." Insert joke about short arms here.
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| You can tell how much fun the kids are having. |
In the afternoon, we decided to get some good mellow outside time. We found a very close park to walk to - it had a huge turf field, very nice (but locked) baseball/softball diamonds, a couple of small play areas, and some tennis courts. It may have also had a pool, but it was not swimming weather at all. My daughter mostly played on the playground, while my son spent a long time playing an imaginary football game, yelling out plays and scores. I sat and watched them and a local kids' soccer team practicing.
The walk took longer than I expected, but eventually, we made our way to the restaurant we had planned for dinner. Along the way, we saw people lining up to do a five k race, which is apparently held every Friday night in Crystal City. It was a lively group and looked like a lot of fun. The restaurant was one of my favorites from my previous trip, and I had talked about it extensively with anyone who would listen. It's called Good Stuff Eatery, and is apparently owned and operated by a former contestant on a competitive cooking show, I think Top Chef. They do burgers, fries, and shakes, and they do it very well. It's definitely pricey for what amounts to high quality fast food, but it was totally worth it. The shakes are the real stars, in my opinion. A good burger is not too hard to find, but these thick, custard shakes with various mix-ins are uniqueish. I actually went with a salad, a cesar again, for my meal, along with a Salty Caramel Kiss shake. I had already tried the Toasted Marshmallow. I loved both, but the latter was still my favorite. One highlight of this place, which is also located on Capitol Hill and Georgetown, are the various dips available for the fries and onion "petals" - onion rings meet onion strings. I like all of them - mango, Old Bay, chipotle, horseradish, sriracha, and maybe one more that I can't remember. It's highly likely that my husband and I will go again when we are back in DC in a few weeks.
As delicious and amazing as all this was, we all were over stuffed afterwards. We walked back to the hotel through the indoor underground mall, which is a sort of odd experience, but was nice because it had been getting a little chilly outside. When we got back, we called it a night.
Cozy bedtime reading for my daughter with "nana" and "papa"
Day 2
On Saturday, we had tickets to see a Washington Nationals game at 1pm, so we had a little bit of time to kill, and I really wanted to get to the Botanical Gardens. It was a bit of a hassle to get everyone (especially kids) motivated to walk over there, but we did. We took the yellow line back to L'Enfant and walked from there. It's a few blocks.
The Gardens are ah-ma-zing. Totally worth it and totally worth a lot more time than what we had, preferably without any reluctant or whiny children in sight. These will likely be a stop for us on our adults-only trip this month.
Just a few of the cool flowers in and around the Botanical Gardens
When kids started getting antsy, we trucked it back to L'Enfant and took the Green Line to the Naval Yards, the stop for the Nationals Park. And the park is really right there at the stop. As you exit the Metro station, the road in front is blocked off during games (not sure about other times) and is a pedestrian walkway. The park sits to the left. As you go, you pass various vendors and a little pre-game party going on. Apparently, the admission is free but it looked like a more 21 plus type of atmosphere, so we skipped it. We did grab a few waters on the way in because they are quite a bit cheaper than in the park. Although they allow you to bring your own food and drinks in sealed containers, the selection of food options is one of the attractions for me. But if I were a season ticket holder, I would totally bring sandwiches in.
The park itself is wonderful. It's relatively new and was extremely well-designed. I love every baseball park that I have ever been to (the list is not very long yet, but I intend to make it much longer over the course of my life). The first impression of the park is that's very open. You come in sort of on the second level, as the field is sunken below ground level. I love that first moment of seeing the perfection of the field - the grass, gleaming green and all uniformly cut, contrasting with the crisp white lines. Even the dirt manages to look neat before the game gets started.
The view as you first walk in to the park.
We made our way to our seats, which were on the next level up. We were early and most of the seats were still empty. The park has a much friendlier feel than our "home" park, Yankee Stadium. First of all, although its the capital, there are far fewer police officers. And while ushers at YS are there to prevent you from going to the wrong section, these ushers really did more of the usher job - showed us to our seats and even wiped them down for us. We then did not need to show our ticket every time we left out seats, which was great because usually I am returning with an armload of food.
The seats were far from being fancy, but for the price - including all fees, it came to $12 per ticket - it was much better than what we'd get at YS where we usually sit in the bleachers for that price. None of this is to knock YS, but just to make the comparison. Yankee Stadium will always be our "home" park and is an incredibly special place for more intangible reasons.
I love baseball, but the real reason I love going to different ballparks is to try the food. Here, the options were extensive, including several restaurants operated by the chain that owns Shake Shack, including, obviously, a Shake Shack. Have spent some time reading the list of food vendors, locations, and what they offer, I decided that I wanted to try Ben's Chili Bowl. It's a famous DC institution, one that I know Pres. Obama ate at soon after moving to DC. And I love chili. I ordered the half smoke which is basically a sausage-like hot dog covered in chili and cheese with mustard and fresh onions. Super yum, though hard to eat. As are all chili-covered hot dogs, no surprise there. For fries, I went with Box Frite with the smoky bacon sauce. Beer was a canned Blue Moon - definitely unadventurous, but I could carry it in my purse back to my seat, thereby eliminating the need for me to make multiple trips.
In the meantime, my husband and kids were at Shake Shack stuck in an enormous line. Ben's had no line at all - I went to the location on the third level, and it might be that the other spot is a lot busier. The other awesome thing about going up there was taking the ramp - the view from that side of the park (we were on the first base side but in the outfield) is incredible. It directly overlooks the river with an amazing view of the naval shipyards.
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| Here is the view from the ramp - definitely worth a walk. |
It must have been about halfway through the game before I realized that I had an amazing view right from my seat. Obviously, the park was designed around this view:
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| Doesn't do it justice, but there is the monument straight ahead. |
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| Zoomed in. |
The baseball game was fun, even though the home team lost to Cardinals. We were rooting for the Nats in their park, but we saw tons of Cards fans both at the game and all around the city that weekend. They tried to make a last minute rally, but it didn't pan out. We hit up the gift shop after where my son got an Espinosa t-shirt and my daughter got a very cute sparkly "Washington Baseball" t-shirt.
The only tricky thing was getting out and back on the train. Even after a ponderous visit to the gift shop, the subway station was overflowing with people. We decided to opt for a taxi instead, but there was a huge line and no taxis in sight. We waited, waited some more, asked about buses, waited some more for that, then realized that the subway station was now empty, so we jumped on that and took it to L'Enphant, where we switched to the blue or orange and took that to Federal Triangle. From there, we wanted to walk to see the White House and get dinner somewhere nearby.
Inevitably, we had a bathroom emergency along the way - and ended up using the bathroom in the extremely fancy and historic Willard Intercontinental hotel, which according to this Wiki page has had lots of famous guests, including Martin Luther King, Jr before the March on Washington in 1963, as well as political luminaries and various celebrities. Of course, we couldn't just run into the lobby to use the bathroom. Oh, no, we had to navigate out way through an extremely dressed up cocktail reception. I have no doubt that it involved at least a few famous guests and was probably a pre-wedding reception gathering. Picture us in typical tourist clothes - baseball caps, t-shirts, jeans. As my kids would say Awk-ward.
Once again, I underestimated the distance and how long it would take to walk, but we did make our way to the White House, which is a pretty cool building, though even cooler, IMO, is the executive office building right next door.
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| Major tourist attraction |
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| Should be major tourist attraction. This picture definitely does not capture the detail of this building. |
Now the challenge was to find us dinner somewhere nearby. I called a few places that got decent reviews on Yelp, but no one had waits under 2 hours. Not at all up for that, I tried a place a few blocks away, Founding Farmers, where I had eaten on my previous trip. For some God-forsaken reason, they would not give me an estimated wait time. Overly optimistic, I decided to have us all walk down there and check it out in person. 2 hours. Great. So, now we have kids who are exhausted from all the walking and starving, with nothing in sight. Hopping on Yelp again, I find a nearby Peruvian restaurant. It has good reviews, so I give them a call. They can seat us right away! Yay! It takes a few minutes to find it, as it's located in the lower level of a building, but we go in and get seated. Sadly, we take one look at the menu and realize that there is absolutely nothing for the kids to eat. None of the adults are particularly excited about the menu either, and we realize that we need to leave. Now, here we are, a large, loud group of six, who made their way very visibly into what is clearly a mom-and-pop place, about to hop up and leave. A bit embarrassing to say the least, but I knew that if the other customers knew how my kids were about to act, they would thank us profusely for leaving.
They were just at the ends of their ropes. The street had several fast food establishments, but nothing was open. At each place, we walked up in hopes, only to have it dashed. Apparently, this part of the city is a lot like Hartford on the weekends - closed up because all the workers have gone. There was a Japanese restaurant that no one wanted to eat at besides me, and it didn't have a children's menu. Finally, we settled on the only other open restaurant, an Indian place. It was empty, but I figured that my kids would at least eat some naan there.
I don't even remember the name of it. It was entirely forgettable. My son had a tantrum over it, but eventually settled down. They ate basically nothing. The food was decent. I felt like it might have been microwaved from a pouch. The server was friendly but sporadic in his attentions. It was just a way to fill our stomachs. I learned now that a group of six on a Saturday night needs reservations in this part of town - and can't count on places like Starbucks or Panera to even be open.
Luckily, the Farragut West Metro station was not far, so we got on the blue line to go back to our hotel and call it a night.
Day 3
Easter! We had an egg hunt in our room and the bunny managed to find us there to bring baskets and other goodies for the kids. Even more miraculously, we were able to find reservations at a spot for an early brunch - really breakfast with some lunch foods - in Old Town Alexandria. Old Town is one of my favorite spots, but I had only been there at night. I was eager for a day time experience. It was actually a little more magical at night, but I still love it and want to go back when I have more time for shopping around. After taking a cab from the train station because the free trolley was not yet running, we walked down to the waterfront to check things out. The kids ran around and got some energy out without any crowds. Breakfast was nice. We were up on the second floor of the restaurant called the Warehouse Bar and Grill and had a nice view. Brunch included an entree and a glass of sparkling wine. I went with the steak and eggs, which was quite tasty, though my husband's choice of the special crab cake benedict was a little better. The kids ordered the New Orleans French Toast, which was quite tasty and came with strawberries and cream on the side.
After we walked back to the train station to help us digest and headed back to pack up and get going. We knew we had a long drive ahead of us, whereas my in laws planned to get to the airport early in hopes of being put on an earlier flight.
The trip back was marginally better than the trip down, closer to 8 hours. I made a few wrong turns as we were trying to get out of the city, and we ended up with a tour of DC at street level that I had not planned on. Once we finally got to the highway, it was a pretty straight shot, though I was sad that some of the worst traffic actually came on the very last leg of our trip near Waterbury, CT. I was also sad that McDonalds was the best we could do for dinner. We tried for a well-reviewed pizza place, but didn't account for the fact that it was Easter Sunday and stuff was closed. Oh, well, it delighted the kids and had a play place for them to get some energy out in. The car ride had some highs and lows:
By the time we got to our house, it was bedtime for sure. For all of us. All in all, we crammed a whole lot into a very short long weekend. If we had sprung for airfare, it would have given us even more time, but the long car trips are special in their own way, even if I complain. One last note - I wanted to learn the origins of the name of the Tappan Zee Bridge as we drove across, so I ended up on the Wiki page. Let's just say that you should not read this while crossing the bridge in traffic. The name, like so much in this part of the world, has American Indian and Dutch origins. It also seriously needs to be replaced, apparently.
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