Washington DC with Older Kids - Part 2

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Ready to see how we finished off our DC trip?! (You can see the first part of our trip here.) For the last 1/2 of the trip we visited Mount Vernon, Baltimore, MD and back into the city of Washington DC.

We had heard lots of recommendations for Mount Vernon so we added it to our list. I’m so glad we did! They have done an amazing job with the property and it is absolutely beautiful. Me and the Washington’s have a very similar favorite color palette! Unfortunately we couldn’t take photos inside but here are some from around the property. They have a gorgeous museum as well as being able to peek inside most of the buildings on property.

You can definitely spend an entire day exploring here. We limited our time to 1/2 day so we could explore a bit more, but if you’re in town longer give yourself time here!

We stopped at Haute Dogs & Fries (the boys’ choice) and they LOVED it (and not just because they have a free Ms PacMan arcade machine) They have gluten free buns too!

The boys wanted to head to Baltimore (we didn’t make it in time to enjoy the aquarium) and we got to check out the USS Constellation and USS Torsk (a submarine) part of the collection of historic ships in the area.

We all enjoyed these so much and even found a man working who had worked on an identical submarine to give us the full tour.

We decided to go big with dinner and had lots of seafood! You can see the boys trying oysters in the video.

The next day we wanted to make our rounds in DC so we decided to grab some tickets to a Hop On/Hop Off double decker bus. This way we could see the things we didn’t intentionally go to and hop off at a few stops on the things we did want to see.

This day we got off the MetroRail at Union Station (I thought the boys would think it was cool) and we had a GREAT lunch at a place I’m rallying to get in Phoenix – Roti – it’s like Chipotle for Mediterranean food and they had a gluten free pita that was awesome! Quick, relatively inexpensive and good food.

Our first hop off was to explore the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum. There is SO much in this museum, much like the Natural History. We did a semi quick visit just making our rounds and checking out the things the boys were really interested in.

From there, we went to the Newseum. This was one of our favorite stops! It was a little less busy and had some really great exhibits.

Part of the Berlin Wall, a beautiful 9/11 exhibit, a moving Pulitzer photographs exhibit and interactive exhibits that the kids loved.

We got back on the double decker and rode our way around the city to get a look at lots of great buildings and memorials.

We got off on my pick for the weekend – the Lincoln Memorial and reflecting pool.

That evening we walked down King Street in Alexandria again and had a great dinner at Virtue Grain and Feed. If you’re a mussel fan – you have to try the bacon, blue cheese mussels.

The next day was all travel for the way home and while we were excited to see our puppies (who may have been even more excited we were home than we were) we were a bit sad to leave the area.

Want to check out the video for the second half of our trip?