My family and I just returned from a family vacation to Washington, D.C. We stayed three nights and four days and had a wonderful time for less than $1,000 — we drove down by car and found a good hotel package through AAA.
We stayed at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, which is located about three blocks from the National Zoo and about two blocks from a metro station. Even better, the hotel has a great outdoor pool which is open to 10 p.m. each night, so we spent our evenings swimming in the pool.
During our trip, we discovered that visiting our nation’s capital makes for a great family trip — my kids loved seeing the White House, the U.S. Capitol building and all the monuments, and a great part was that almost all of our activities were free.
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On our first day in D.C., we stopped at the zoo (which has free admission) and saw the pandas, monkeys and elephants. We stopped for dinner at an Irish pub near our hotel and ended the day with a dip in the hotel’s pool.
We could have spent big bucks on commercial tours of the capital — for a price, tourists can tour the capital by bike, trolley, bus or on a DC Ducks tour (which goes on both land and water), but we opted to walk it instead. In one day, we walked everything from the White House to the Washington Monument, to the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials. The kids got tired, but we were lucky that we chose a day that wasn’t too hot or humid. (It can get really hot and sticky in D.C. in the summer.) We made sure to take frequent water breaks and stopped for ice cream on occasion. (There are plenty
of refreshment stands around the monuments.)
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The next day, we saw the U.S. Capitol building and the Supreme Court building. Along the way, we stopped in the National Gallery of Art (where my daughters wanted to see paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci and Vincent Van Gogh, and where we had lunch). We also went to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (where the kids tried out flight simulators, touched a moon rock and saw the flashy red plane that Amelia Earhart flew solo across the Atlantic) and the United States Botanic Garden, where the kids saw banana and tea plants and compared the scents of various herbs, spices and flowers. Because all of the museums were free, we didn’t feel like we had to spend all day in them to make up for an admission price — we only stayed as long as we wanted to or until the kids got bored.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped by Ford's Theatre, where President Lincoln was shot, and saw the home across the street where he died.
We only had a little time in the morning before we had to check out on our final day in D.C., so we hit the zoo again to pick up some souvenirs for the kids, watch the orangutans on the “O Line” (a system of cables throughout the park that the orangutans can swing on high above) and see the gibbons (small apes) maneuver throughout their habitat like expert trapeze artists.
Our trip was a fun one for the family, and great budget one as well, as we didn’t have to pay any admission prices, ate fairly cheaply (we
stocked a mini fridge on our room for our breakfasts) and didn’t spend any money on airfare.
I am already interested in planning our next family vacation, and am looking for budget family vacation ideas. I’d love to take the kids to the Grand Canyon, but am not sure if there’s any way to swing that one on a budget.
