Washington DC 2016

FINALLY, we have taken our first trip back to Washington, DC as a family!!! We spent 3 days in Washington, DC and Alexandria, VA and then headed to Virginia Beach for the next 3 days.

Our first stop was Old Town, Alexandria. We dodged a few raindrops and took the kids to the Torpedo Factory. Benj was impressed with the torpedoes, Julia loved some of the art, and we were interested in a project that the archeological society of Alexandria has going on to reconstruct a shipwreck that was recently discovered. 

Dinner was at Pizza Paradiso. A favorite pizza place of Andrew and me; it wasn't such a big hit with the kids - the pizza was too fancy!

dinnertime antics

who will laugh first?

Saturday morning we woke up and headed to the Old Town farmers market. It's the oldest running outdoor farmers market in the country and was often an early Saturday morning stop for me when we lived there. We had a true farmers market breakfast of fresh chocolate milk, carrots, sausage pastries, and strawberries!

From there we hopped on the Metro into the city and headed for the monuments. First up, Washington!

quack, quack, do you think they see their reflection?

After a stroll through the WWII Memorial and by the Reflecting Pool we headed to the kid's requested destination -- the Natural History Museum! To see.... the Hope Diamond! They have been really into geology lately (and both are lovers of all things shiny!) and so they were excited to see rooms and rooms of rocks and gems. 

The Hope Diamond didn't actually live up to their expectations as they had imagined something much bigger but there were plenty of other fascinating objects.

giant quartz - Julia's favorite

my favorite - another quartz formation

Julia's favorite color these days is yellow so she was drawn to this sulfur 

and of course, a meteorite!

he's watching you!

We also saw the mummies (a favorite of Benjamin) and a few dinosaurs but the geology hall was really the highlight.  From there we headed back to our hotel for a rest and then had a very fun evening visiting with friends of ours and their daughter. 

Sunday, we awoke with another museum destination in mind - the Air and Space Museum. I've been looking forward to taking Julia there for quite a while given her obsession with everything space related! We didn't take too many pictures but we did get this one of her in front of her hero's, Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 Command Module. 

And Benjamin chose a captain hat as his souvenir! He's ready to fly!

Then we headed up the Mall, made a swing through the Botanical Gardens (another of our old favorite spots), past the Capitol, and over to Union Station to meet some more dear friends for coffee. 

tired feet!

Benj was there! But he may not remember!

We ended the weekend with a delicious dinner at Mai Thai in Old Town along with a co-worker of Andrew's and his wife. The kids were fascinated because they both race cars and were happy to show off pictures of their rides! And so ended our short stay in DC. But we'll definitely be back and it won't take 4 years this time!