Day 30 ~ In which #KiwiChickInUSA visits the Capital

An early start this morning to beat the heat on a 2 hour walking tour of the Washington monuments. We thought we’d allowed enough time to get through D.C rush hour traffic to the parking building we’d pre-booked – evidently not, as when we arrived on the corner of the park beside the Washington monument, our tour group was nowhere to be seen since we were over 5 minutes late. Oops. Luckily we spotted them under a shady tree closer to the monument, so we caught up without drama and enjoyed learning about the Washington monument, World War II memorial, Vietnam War memorial, and Lincoln Memorial. We’d last visited the monuments/memorials nine years ago with our kids so it was really neat to come back here.

Taken by Miss 15 when she was Miss 6.

Us in 2016.

Miss 15 when she was Miss 6. One of my favorite photos of her, completely spontaneous. We were all overwhelmed by the magnitude of lives lost.

DH in 2016.

After the tour ended we hopped on the Circulator bus and found a food court for lunch. Then we jumped on again for an almost round trip before we got off at the National Museum of American History. We spent a fascinating chunk of time at the museum and it was well worth a visit since last time we were in D.C this museum was closed.

By the time we’d left the museum we were both tired but we were booked into a ghost tour starting at Layfayette Park, so after a quick dinner we met our guide. The tour was fun (and luckily not to taxing on the walking front) but again, no ghosts spotted.

It finished outside the White House which was lit up very prettily and from there we slowly limped back to the parking garage to collect our car. Only we got lost and ended up in the bowels of some other parking garage! Funny now, not so funny at the time – but we did eventually get to the right garage to pick up the car, only to get stuck in traffic jams at 10.30pm! Busy city. But not as busy as tomorrow night’s destination…NYC.