Washington DC - Things to do?

Mr E

I'm heading to DC next week for 6 days (going to visit my brother who is working over there!). Any recommendations for things to do?

I definitely plan a day at the Smithsonian. I'm going to the Kennedy graves, the White House, the various Memorials and so on.

Where else is worth visiting?

Where is the best shopping in DC?

Any tips greatfully appreciated!

deisemum

I went to Washington before 9/11 and much prefer it to New York or Boston.
If they still do the FBI tour it's worth doing. We really enjoyed it also the White House tour is good.

Mr E

Thanks deisemum... any ideas about shopping? Where do you recommend?

twinkletoes

Hi,
We spent two days in Washington during the summer - the air and space museum and the Spy museum were the highlights!! Absolutely amazing!We spent hours in both places and we're not museum people at all!!

Unfortunately we weren't impressed with the shopping side of things..Washington doesn't really have a main city center as such...it's quite spread out but there are probably a few big discount shopping centers outside the city....we didn't get a chance to check that out.

Also we got a taxi ride(as we were stuck for time) out to see the Pentagon...it wasn't very expensive and the taxi driver was really great pointing different things out to us and getting us to a great location for photograhs...

Have fun!

Bah

I was living in Washington for the summer, it's pretty cool. There's definetly loads to see - try to get to the Smithsonian museums (whichever ones interest you - there's loads of them and theyre all free), the Spy Museums's pretty good, and the National Zoo. And all the monuments, Arlington cemetry, the Whitehouse, Capitol Building,etc. Union Station (not 100% sure if that's the name - it's the main inter-city train station) is actually pretty cool too. And Chinatown/Gallery Place - all of these places are on the metro - you're probably better off just buying day passes and using the metro as much as possible. It's clean, fast and pretty cheap.

There's a great mall in Pentagon City (the metro stop is inside the actual mall), lots of big name stores, but it's not exactly a place for bargains. Big Macy's, Nordstrom, Apple, Abercrombie, Williams Sonoma and loads of other big name stores. Accross the road from the Pentagon City mall is a CostCo warehouse - great for cheap electronics and random stuff, there's a Borders book store in there too.

Washington's definetly a great place to spend a few days in.

tabatha

i was in washington this summer gone and really didnt like it. new york is so much better. there are no real shops their. u could do it in a day to be honest. dont bother doing arlington cemetery cause its not great. apart from jfk and bobby there is no one else there you would know.

Bah

Bah wrote:

I was living in Washington for the summer, it's pretty cool. There's definetly loads to see - try to get to the Smithsonian museums (whichever ones interest you - there's loads of them and theyre all free), the Spy Museums's pretty good, and the National Zoo. And all the monuments, Arlington cemetry, the Whitehouse, Capitol Building,etc. Union Station (not 100% sure if that's the name - it's the main inter-city train station) is actually pretty cool too. And Chinatown/Gallery Place - all of these places are on the metro - you're probably better off just buying day passes and using the metro as much as possible. It's clean, fast and pretty cheap.

There's a great mall in Pentagon City (the metro stop is inside the actual mall), lots of big name stores, but it's not exactly a place for bargains. Big Macy's, Nordstrom, Apple, Abercrombie, Williams Sonoma and loads of other big name stores. Accross the road from the Pentagon City mall is a CostCo warehouse - great for cheap electronics and random stuff, there's a Borders book store in there too.

Washington's definetly a great place to spend a few days in.

All in all thats it in a nutshell.
pentagon city is handy (but its not a discount place) being on the subway and easy to get to.

I found the spy museum to be a bit boring tbh but worth a look I suppose.
Do a guided tour of congress(capitol hill), just take a walk up to the tourism centre there and buy the tour.Theres tight security obviously but if its a week day, you may be able to see it in session as part of the tour.

As regards New York,it might be worth a day trip up there, its less than an hour by plane from reagan airport with cheap flights and very doable for a day trip or an overnighter without messing up your visit to your brother.
We did washington twice that way when visiting New York.
Flights from continental return for under a $100 and you could get 10 hours in new york.
When buying the ticket, quote your international return ticket number and they will deduct the tax from the internal ticket price.

Just an idea for variation.

Mr E

Cheers for that, Earthman. Thats great advice.