We had a Disney December, Bahamian Xmas, NYC NYE and then some!! COMPLETED!

Aussie Wendy said:

Wow to get such an upgrade. Very snazzy. Did you feel like royalty? Looked very cold there. In contrast we melted when we were in Washington which dampened our enthusiasm somewhat though we adored the museums.

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It was a great surprise and experience. We certainly did feel pretty spesh!

The temperature in DC was a real contrast to what we had experienced in Anaheim & Orlando and of course the Bahamas. DC sure was cold, but that was just getting us ready for New York.

What time of year were you in DC? When we were there a couple of people did make comments about the summer time in DC which they described as very hot & humid. While we have no actual plans yet, we will definitely be going back there and for the next few years , school holidays are our only options so either same time of year or the US summer time given we want to go for more than a couple of weeks.

I gotta get me a Mr Williams!!

Washington - Big Bus Tour

Our day then took us to breakfast at a local café. The plan was then to do a city bus tour. We thought this would take an hour or so and then we would go back and visit some of the monuments that we wanted to see again. Well that didn’t really go to plan. We caught the “Big Red Bus” tour from outside the Hotel. It was really crowded when we got on, so much so we couldn’t get seats together and were downstairs. The Bus went to Union Station, where that circle actually finished and was going to restart in 15mins or so. Some people got off, so we were able to make our way to the top deck and got 2 seats together and another behind.

This is the Map and we took the Red Route starting at Union Station which is at the top right of the map. It certainly took more than “an hour or so”, more like 3 and half! There were stops we could have got off , but in the end we stayed on and saw so much of the city and many monuments. We also had a really good tour guide who provided us with lots and lots of history and information. It was a longer tour than we were hoping, which was also exacerbated by some bad traffic which meant in one section would would normally take 5mins to get through took close to 40 mins. That all said, we saw some great monuments and buildings and sights and I was really interested in all the information about the city and sights.



Here is the link to the actual map if you want a better look.

http://eng.bigbustours.com/UploadedFiles/Washington_DC_Map_July_2016_201607295144.pdf

United States Navy Memorial


Union Station






You name it, there is pretty much a Museum for it



“National Association for Letter Carriers” aka the Postman’s Union


The Capitol was all scaffolded up being repaired












Reflection Pond


James Garfield

All Smithsonian museums in DC are free entry

you can see the Washington Monument from many vantage points

This museum may look small, but it goes below ground

The Smithonian Castle

National Museum of African American History & Culture. This wasn’t open yet. Apparently Oprah Winfrey donated $20m to its construction costs. Which I think among other things gets her a theatre named after her.

There are two distinct shades in the Washington Monument. This was because the monument was built in two stages with a gap of 23 years where construction was halted. When they restarted, the marble and stone was sourced from a different place and thus the different colour

Washington Monument to left and The Jefferson Memorial to the right

The Lincoln Memorial

Washington - Big Bus Tour cont...


The Jefferson














The “Fed”-eral Reserve











Ford’s Theatre – where President Lincoln was shot



Lincoln was taken across the road to the house after he was shot and this is where he died.













This (The1st Amendment) was on the front of the “Newseum” a Museum dedicated to News & Journalism.



On the big bus!



I only put this photo up because the tour guide told us that part of the conditions that was put on the redevelopment of this building as a Trump Hotel was that the clock tower and observation deck was to remain open to the public for viewing. I saw on the website that they are opening later this year







The National Archives






Oldest Fire Station in DC



Anyone remember a TV show with this name?









Dinner tonight was at The Hamilton. We arrived slightly before our reservation time and were told that the table wasn’t ready, they took our number and said we they would txt us when the table was ready. This wasn’t ideal as we were hungry and it was cold out but we went out for a short walk and about 20mins later we got a txt. Then when we came back we got the same routine, we told them that they just txt us that the table was ready. They sorted something out and took us to a table. The food & service here was quite average. We found it difficult to get the waiters attention. We had asked about a particular dessert. He told us it was like a chocolate lava cake, which DS said he wanted when it came out, it looked completely different. It wasn’t even hot. Eventually we got a new one, which still wasn’t a lava cake so I think something was lost in translation. Overall the service and food was nowhere near the level that we had got used to mist other places providing. I provided some feedback to them on there twitter account but they never bothered responding.





Back at the hotel

lffam said:

It was a great surprise and experience. We certainly did feel pretty spesh!

The temperature in DC was a real contrast to what we had experienced in Anaheim & Orlando and of course the Bahamas. DC sure was cold, but that was just getting us ready for New York.

What time of year were you in DC? When we were there a couple of people did make comments about the summer time in DC which they described as very hot & humid. While we have no actual plans yet, we will definitely be going back there and for the next few years , school holidays are our only options so either same time of year or the US summer time given we want to go for more than a couple of weeks.

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We were there around 9-12 July so mid summer! Like you coming from Qld we are used to the humidity but it still hit us hard. Can't remember what the actual temps were - have to look up my diary and see if we noted it down but hotter than we usually get here in Brissie. We had been in NY previous and it had been hot there but it felt much hotter in Washington. The best outside bit was a dusk bike ride in the cooler evening around all the monuments though we ran short on time and had to rush the end like the Lincoln Monument. We also enjoyed the air con in the museums and art galleries!

***** Newsflash*******

Just booked another trip to US for next June/July! likely wont be Disney other than maybe a final stopover in LA for a day or 2 in Anaheim, but will heavily North East USA and south Canada!

I'll get back to this trip report soon!

Oh that's great news about your next trip! How exciting

Yes looking forward to hearing more about this trip please.

I agree very exciting hol plans and so jealous!

Yay!! Another trip!

I'm really enjoying this trip report - great photos!

Travel Mum said:

Oh that's great news about your next trip! How exciting

Yes looking forward to hearing more about this trip please.

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Aussie Wendy said:

I agree very exciting hol plans and so jealous!

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Montanabel said:

Yay!! Another trip!

I'm really enjoying this trip report - great photos!

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Very excited about the new trip. Just flights booked so far. I don't want to write too much about it yet as I will then get distracted and never finish this report which I REALLY want to !!

Spys in the News....

Yes new trip (flights) booked, very exciting !!....ok thanks for being patient, back to this trip....

We started our day with breakfast at JW Marriot. Great place for a hearty American Breakfast. Today was DS day in DC. We were going to the International Spy Museum and time permitting also the Newseum. We had pre-purchased our Spy Museum tickets and we got general admission and also Operation Spy.

Operation Spy is a one-hour live action spy adventure. This adrenaline-fueled mission gives you the chance to become an intelligence officer on an international mission.

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We had booked 11:40 for our Operation Spy Mission. We arrived early and thought we could go through the museum before the mission. We were able to get through most of the museum before we had to be down at the foyer for Operation Spy. The museum itself has a lot of information about this clandestine world. I personally found parts of it quite interesting with other parts a little “ho-hum” so to speak. Operation Spy was something a little different. You have a group of people and your are then allocated into smaller groups to perform certain “tasks” through a set with footage, audio recordings and narration from a personal guide. It is certainly geared towards kids and I’d say early teens is when the interest would start to wane a little. DS enjoyed it and like I said it was something a little different. It isn’t something I would do again after having done it once. I didn’t actually take any photos at the museum. I’m not sure if that was because it wasn’t permitted or I just didn’t. After Operation Spy we did go back to see the rest of the museum. They had a James Bond Exhibit which was interesting and I was a 007 fan in my younger years, so that was interesting to see also.

Overall, the Spy Museum is worth a few hours, though in hindsight with our tight schedule we might have skipped this for something else, but now we are going back to DC, it really doesn’t matter!

We got out of the Spy museum around 1pm and we made our way to the Newseum. This is a Museum dedicated to News & Journalism. This is right up DS alley as he wants to be a journalist and has so since he was in grade 2. We didn’t pre purchase our tickets, mainly because we were not 100% sure that we were going to get here as we didn’t know how much time we would spend at the Spy Museum. We were able to get he “AAA” rate, though the attendant didn’t recognise our RACQ motor club card until we showed them the small AAA logo and code on the back. This gave us a small discount off the ticket price. A side note here, all of the Smithsonian Museums in DC are free to get into, the two museums we went to during our stay were both commercial museums and had an admission fee!

There was a cafeteria type eatery inside the Newseum, so we thought we could get some lunch here. Unfortunately, the selection was greatly reduced as they had a gas problem and their main cooking facilities were not operation, but we were able to get some food which replenished our stores, so we could then make our way through the Newseum.

It was recommended that we started at the theatre which showed a short film on the Newseum and the best way to work your way around it. They recommended you take the large elevators to the top level (there are 6 levels from memory) and work your way down. Now I hadn’t read too much about the actual exhibits that were in the Newseum. When we came out of the orientation video, we entered an exhibit which truly blew me away. We stepped out and around a corner and here were about 8 section of the Berlin Wall.

The Berlin Wall Gallery tells the gripping story of how news and information helped topple a closed and oppressive society. Featured are eight 12-foot-high concrete sections of the original wall — the largest display of unaltered portions of the wall outside of Germany. A three-story East German guard tower that loomed near Checkpoint Charlie — Berlin’s best-known East-West crossing — stands nearby.

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I think I was just shocked that I was not expecting this type of exhibit here. While I had known the circumstances of the toppling of the Berlin Wall, to actually see and later touch it was really unexpected and then reading some of the stories that went along with the exhibit it set me back a little.




















Death Tower from Checkpoint Charlie











These are from the “Inside Today’s FBI”

From the Boston Marathon bombing to the Internet’s sinister Silk Road, go behind the scenes with the FBI to explore how crime and crime-fighting have evolved in the post-9/11 age. As the nation’s top crime-fighting force embarks on its second century, the exhibit will explore how the FBI detects and disrupts terrorists both at home and abroad, and thwarts powerful cyber criminals who steal data and money.

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They have a wall where they have that days the front pages from major newspapers across the word. Here is the SMH the day we were there.





Pennsylvania Ave taken from a balcony. It was absolutely freezing out there.



The National Archives






This is the “Hurry up Dad it’s freezing cold expression!”


The Capitol under repair

Spys in the News cont...

The 9/11 Exhibit.

The 9/11 Gallery Sponsored by Comcast is a vivid exploration of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, intertwined with extraordinary first-person accounts from journalists who covered the story.

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The pole you see sticking up in this photo will become clear in the next what it is.


That pole was part of the Transmission Tower that stood on top of one of the Twin Towers which you can see mangled and damaged and is displayed in the centre of this exhibit.




The front pages from across USA & the World
















There is an area where you can be a location journalist or news/weather present in a studio. You read a script on an autocue in front of a green screen and the background is superimposed. They upload the videos to Youtube for a month I think.



DS looks right at home behind the News Desk I think!



We stayed to almost closing time (5pm) and we could have easily done another 2 hours at least. This place is truly fascinating and one I could not recommend highly enough. We will certainly be going back here next time. It was getting dark and turning into a bit of a miserable evening as the rain seemed like it wasn’t too far off.

For dinner we decided to stick to somewhere pretty close, so we went back to the JW Marriot for dinner. After dinner we took a short stroll to the National Christmas Tree again to see it all lit up.











The Hotel














That was a whirlwind tour of DC. We only had two full days here and we didn't get to most of what we wanted to, While we saw all of the monuments from afar, we didn't get to go up close to the Lincoln, the Jefferson or the Washington Monument. Nor did we get to the the Smithsonian museums. These will definitely now be on the plans for the next time now. That said our time here was fantastic , what we did see was so enriching and certainly placed a tick on the bucket list.

Tomorrow we would be heading to NYC for another first time experience.....

Great to hear about your DC stay. We will have 4 nights but that only means 3 full days so not much more than you. I've lost track of the time, what were your dates in DC?

Travel Mum said:

Great to hear about your DC stay. We will have 4 nights but that only means 3 full days so not much more than you. I've lost track of the time, what were your dates in DC?

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We arrived afternoon of 26th and left morning of 29th December.

We will be there Dec 28 - Jan 1 this year and so a very similar time to you hence why I'm taking note of the weather and the crowds

Travel Mum said:

We will be there Dec 28 - Jan 1 this year and so a very similar time to you hence why I'm taking note of the weather and the crowds

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Then will be very similar I would say!

Yes I'd expect they will be unless we get snow which, as much as my family would love that, I'd rather not given how it could cause transport chaos.

So, to recap, during your days did you?: Day 1 - Walk around the big White House block, Day 2: Do the Big Bus tour and Day 3: Do the Museums?

I've worked out a rough plan for us which is:

Day 1: Arrive late afternoon and my sister & her family arrive in the evening so no actual plans

Day 2: Walk to the White House and go around the long block and then walk down to the Mall/Tidal Basin area and tour around the monuments (might use the DC Circulator bus to save our feet), and then go to the Ice-Hockey game that night

Day 3: Walk to the Capitol and Library of Congress area to have a look around and then visit one or two Smithsonian museums. They will be relatively quick visits to hit the highlights. I've had the National Museum of American History highly recommended so will aim for that one plus perhaps another such as the Air & Space one.

Day 4: Will apply for Pentagon tour tickets and so, if we get them, will combine the tour of the Pentagon with Arlington Cemetery. OR may go to the Zoo to see the pandas and then Georgetown for the afternoon.

Day 5: We depart on our train to NYC from Union Station at midday so get to the station a bit early so we can have a look around it.

Now I need for you to post your New York experiences please so that I can be inspired to start our planning our time there like your Washington DC posts inspired me to finally make a start

I remember the Berlin wall coming down - how it happened so unexpectedly almost - it was amazing live TV. I never realised the Newseum had so much interesting stuff in it. I had thought about it for our visit but then switched it for the National Archives which had equally unexpected fascinating exhibits at the time on the US Presidents and released former secret documents. My DH and I are also a bit ambivalent about journalism because today's media is so unethical and stirs up more trouble than it reveals. I studied Journalism at Uni and decided I wasn't cut out for the career although at the time I completed the major which was the most you could do way back then and could have entered the profession. I did like media research however. I do wish your son all the best if he sticks with his chosen career. He certainly looks the part at the news desk! I just find it sad that at Uni you have such high ideals and get taught such high ethics that get dashed if you work for large broadcast media where the emphasis is on the $ and exploit whatever/whoever you can to get a story, however, there are a range of roles you can enter with JR as a degree as well as just straight news reporting for the biggies. I think your and our time in Washington we did nothing the same - lol! so yes certainly worthy of a second visit!

Travel Mum said:

Yes I'd expect they will be unless we get snow which, as much as my family would love that, I'd rather not given how it could cause transport chaos.

So, to recap, during your days did you?: Day 1 - Walk around the big White House block, Day 2: Do the Big Bus tour and Day 3: Do the Museums?

I've worked out a rough plan for us which is:

Day 1: Arrive late afternoon and my sister & her family arrive in the evening so no actual plans

Day 2: Walk to the White House and go around the long block and then walk down to the Mall/Tidal Basin area and tour around the monuments (might use the DC Circulator bus to save our feet), and then go to the Ice-Hockey game that night

Day 3: Walk to the Capitol and Library of Congress area to have a look around and then visit one or two Smithsonian museums. They will be relatively quick visits to hit the highlights. I've had the National Museum of American History highly recommended so will aim for that one plus perhaps another such as the Air & Space one.

Day 4: Will apply for Pentagon tour tickets and so, if we get them, will combine the tour of the Pentagon with Arlington Cemetery. OR may go to the Zoo to see the pandas and then Georgetown for the afternoon.

Day 5: We depart on our train to NYC from Union Station at midday so get to the station a bit early so we can have a look around it.

Now I need for you to post your New York experiences please so that I can be inspired to start our planning our time there like your Washington DC posts inspired me to finally make a start

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I know exactly what you mean about the snow. We would have loved some, but it would have been a big risk for our plans. We certainly would have at least bough some new shoes as we had nothing that would have stayed dry or warm. A week after we left, the whole North Wast got hit with a winter blizzard which shut cities down. We would have been pretty worried if we were in that as all transport, restaurants and business just shut down.

The Mall is BIG & long so your feet will def need some rest! We will definitely be going to Arlington Cemetery next time so thats a great idea. I think you are probably on the same train we were on as ours left at midday also!

Aussie Wendy said:

I remember the Berlin wall coming down - how it happened so unexpectedly almost - it was amazing live TV. I never realised the Newseum had so much interesting stuff in it. I had thought about it for our visit but then switched it for the National Archives which had equally unexpected fascinating exhibits at the time on the US Presidents and released former secret documents. My DH and I are also a bit ambivalent about journalism because today's media is so unethical and stirs up more trouble than it reveals. I studied Journalism at Uni and decided I wasn't cut out for the career although at the time I completed the major which was the most you could do way back then and could have entered the profession. I did like media research however. I do wish your son all the best if he sticks with his chosen career. He certainly looks the part at the news desk! I just find it sad that at Uni you have such high ideals and get taught such high ethics that get dashed if you work for large broadcast media where the emphasis is on the $ and exploit whatever/whoever you can to get a story, however, there are a range of roles you can enter with JR as a degree as well as just straight news reporting for the biggies. I think your and our time in Washington we did nothing the same - lol! so yes certainly worthy of a second visit!

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You have the same concerns about a journalism career as we do. We love his passion for it and that he has had it for so long. He still has a fair way to go so he might broaden or vere off as he does have other interests also.

I think the Newseum is really more geared towards the "honourable" profession, rather than the many hacks that exist now.