Our family of four went for a long weekend during the end of cherry blossoms blooming and had 3 full days. I will share what we did and what I would have done differently.

Getting there

We choose to drive into the DC area since we are only 6 hours away. If you are driving in, keep in mind that it may take longer with all of the traffic around the Capital area. If you are not used to driving in bigger cities, give yourself some extra time and possibly switch drivers half way to give breaks on the traffic.

You can also easily fly into the area, with two major airports nearby. If you are staying near a metro station you could get by without renting a car.

Where we stayed

When looking for a hotel, price and location were the top priorities when choosing. I wanted to stay within 1 to 2 blocks from a metro station, have good food nearby, and have prices we could afford. Keep in mind, like most big cities, hotels will be more expensive. So expect to pay more than you would in smaller cities.

We stayed at Homewood Suites near the Convention Center. We were just two blocks from the metro station and had plenty of restaurants to choose from within a few blocks. We could have walked to the National Mall from our location but choose the metro to save our feet. There is a fee to park at the hotel, like most of the downtown hotels. So keep this in mind when booking your hotel and compare the prices of parking as well. A bonus with staying at Homewood Suites is that you have a larger fridge, sink, dishware, dishwasher and stove. This helps with families if you want to cook or warm up food at the hotel.

While there are not many options for staying near the National Mall, there are a lot to choose from north of it and near the White House. The farther away from the National Mall, the cheaper it should be. Just make sure you are near a metro station or be prepared to drive and try to find parking each day.

If you have a larger group try looking at Airbnb or VRBO to see if you can rent a place nearby.

Before you go..

When planning out your trip, decide what museums and memorials and buildings you want to see. Some of these you will need to book a reservation several months ahead especially if you are going during a busy time. (Spring breaks and Summer tend to be the busiest).

I knew we wanted to see the Spy Museum and Air & Space Museum. Both of these you will want to reserve your time. The Air & Space Museum is usually sold out if you try to go the day of during the Spring or Summer. You can reserve your time here.

The Spy Museum is not necessary to book ahead most of the time but you could get cheaper prices booking ahead. So if you know your family wants to go and you have a day in mind, I would try to get tickets ahead of time to help lower the costs.

To tour the Capitol building it is also suggested to reserve you time ahead of time. For a more in depth tour of the Capitol building, contact your local congress representative to get a tour of the building.

If you want to tour the White house, you also have to contact your local congress representative. The window is small to request a tour. It has to be at least 21 days in advance and no longer than 90 days.

For the Capitol building and White house it is not necessary to book a tour if you want to see just the exterior of the building. Our family opted not to do either of the tours and were able to see the outside of the buildings just fine.

While not necessary, I order metro cards for my family online. I wanted to have the cards loaded and ready to go so wouldn’t have to mess with it there. There are vending machines at stations and you can now get the app on your phone to use. Since we had younger kids, it was easier to have a card for each of us. You can order the cards here.

What to bring

Make sure to bring comfortable walking shoes and maybe an extra pair just in case your feet decide they don’t like the first pair.

I would also recommend reusuable water bottles for everyone. With all the walking it is nice having your own water and not having to buy it throughout the day. We also brought a couple of small backpacks to carry water, snacks and umbrellas. Most museums are ok with small backpacks. You can check size requirements on their websites.

Plan out your days

Below is how my family did our trip. We tried to group together what had similar locations. Use our trip to help plan what could work for your family.

Day 1

We got up early to drive the 6 hours into D.C. We did hit traffic in Baltimore and District of Columbia. It was to early to check into the hotel so we drove straight to the Museum of the Bible. We were able to find parking at a nearby garage. There are also apps to help find parking locations.

You do have to pay for this Museum, but I feel it was well worth it. For our family of 4, it was $99 total. They have several floors to look at. We started on the fourth floor where we saw Drive Thru History and very old manuscripts of books of the bible. We had just learned about the Gutenberg Press, so when we saw part of the Gutenberg Bible it helped bring the history alive to us. There are many historic bibles and letters that you can look at.

We went down to the 3rd floor where they have a walk through village for both the Old Testament and the New Testament. There was a very long line to see the Old Testament so we only saw the New Testament side. They show what houses would have looked like and the tools they used. This helped my kids see first hand and bring to life what life was like when reading the scriptures for the New Testament.

From there we walked a couple of blocks to the Gallery of Art West. We did not see the East building that has more modern works of art. We were able to see a Da Vinci, 2 Monets, Van Gogh and several Homers along with many other beautiful paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs. We were there during a Spring break week so it was busy, expect to have crowds and decide what you want to see. You could spend all day here to see it all.

By this point, my kids were tired and we got back to our car, drove 10 minutes to our hotel. We walked down to Capital Burger that was very good. I would recommend eating there if you are close by.

Day 2

I had my family get up early and we left the hotel by 7am to take the metro to Capitol South station. We were able to see the Capitol building, Supreme Court House and other buildings with no crowds. It was a great time to sip some coffee and stroll around looking at the magnificent architecture. After walking around we did see there was starting to be a long line to get inside for a tour of the Capitol building.

We had a little time before our reserve time to the Air & Space Museum so we walked to the Grant Statue and Eisenhower memorial which is next to the Air & Space Museum.

There was already a line for our 10am timed entry by 9:30am, so we got in line and were let in at 10am. Beware that most museums check bags, so be ready for them to check your bag and go through a metal detector.

The Air & Space Museum was half under construction so we couldn’t see all of their exhibits. Some highlights for us was an original Wright airplane, astronaut clothes and walking through some older planes.

It took our family 1.5 hours to walk around. It could take longer if they have more exhibits open or if you read everything there.

We finished at 11:30 and walked towards the Washington Memorial where they were having a kite festival. It was crowded and we watched from afar and ate some food from the food trucks lined up along the roads around the National Mall.

After resting our feet and watching some of the beautiful kites, we walked nearby to the Smithsonian American History Museum. There is plenty to see here, so we picked the top things we wanted to see. We saw the American Wars, gunboat, transportation, First Ladies and Electricity. We didn’t even cover half of the museum.

We rested on bench for little bit before heading back to the crowded side walks and walked to the White House. It took about 20 minutes for us to walk there. We were able to see the White House through the black fence.

Day 3

We had reservations at the Spy Museum at 9:30 and I knew the Tidal Basin and memorials were close by. So we took the metro to Smithsonian and walked over to the Tidal Basin to see the cherry blossoms in bloom. It was a gorgeous walk around. Since it was 8 in the morning it wasn’t too crowded yet either.

We saw the Thomas Jefferson memorial (pictured above) from across the basin. We walked to the reflecting pool, World War II memorial and then the Lincoln memorial. We were running out of time and quickly saw the Korean memorial and MLK Jr. memorial on our quick 30 minute walk back to the Spy Museum.

In the future, I would give us more time to walk around the memorials. The walking takes more time than I calculated. We missed out on the Vietnam Memorial and others that we will have to come back to see.

After pushing the family to get to the Spy Museum, we thankfully made it for our 9:30 entry time. They have you ride the elevators to the 5th floor and give you passes with your identity and passcodes. From there you get to solve spy puzzles while looking at actual spy artifacts. My kids had a blast trying to solve the different puzzles and liked that it made them feel like a spy. We all enjoyed looking through the items that were used by previous spies.

There are videos from previous spies as well. My son enjoyed those the most. This was the favorite museum of both of my kids and they have asked to go back. There are 2 floors that you can interact with. The third floor currently had Bond vehicles when we were there. This was an additional cost on top of your ticket.

There are fast food options next door at the L’enfant plaza mall. We had some snacks and iced coffee from Starbucks and continued our adventure by walking over to the Natural History Museum. Since it was a weekend and Spring break, this museum was packed and it made it hard to walk around and see everything we wanted to.

We were able to see many fossils and bones along with the Hope diamond (which was a wait and I felt not worth it). If it was less busy I would try to see it but there is so many other things to see. We also saw the insect exhibit and Egyptian exhibit. By this point the kids were worn out and hungry. So we went to the museum cafe and ate under the huge mastodon.

After resting up, we made our way back to the hotel walking by the Ford Theater on 10th street. We also saw part of China town before getting back to our hotel. We ate at Founding Father’s Distillery for dinner which wasn’t a far walk from our hotel. Good homemade food and it looked like they had a good breakfast as well.

What I learned

-There are so many sights to see in D.C. and making the most of your time to see the things you actually want to see makes your trip much more enjoyable.

-Be prepared to walk a lot! My kids were troopers and I’m glad we were able to enjoy the trip and keep up with all of the walking.

-I would definitely make more time for all of the memorials around the Tidal Basin and possibly see the Arlington Cemetery next time.

-The metro helped a lot and was useful since parking is very hard to come by.

-Having our own snacks and water made it handy with all the activities we were doing.

We had a good time exploring our nations capital and look forward to seeing more of it on another trip.