Five Days in Washington DC - October 2019

[jocat]

Five Days in Washington DC - October 2019

Well it’s pre-trippie time, and for the second year running, I’m managing to write this prior to our arrival at the airport hotel the night before we travel. Believe me, that is such an achievement!

Our usual holidays are based in the summer - I work in a school so have to stick to school holidays. However, this year was very different - I had to work for at least 3 weeks of the holidays, Martin had a work project on for 5 weeks of the possible 6 weeks and our daughter gave birth to our granddaughter. Not going away then didn’t bother me a bit for this lovely reason.

We decided to try and find somewhere to go in October half-term and after looking at the prices for a week in Europe, , we decided to look for a city break further afield.

We love exploring different parts of America, so it didn’t take long for Washington DC to be mentioned - it had been on our wish lists for a while. So we started looking at flights. We hoped to travel in Premium Economy, so our preferred airline for this was Virgin - for us, BA’s PE doesn’t come close in terms of seat comfort and value for money compared to Virgin. I’d had an email about Virgin Holidays having a sale, so decided to look there for ideas of cost, and then compare it with booking everything separately.

I hadn’t got a clue about the different areas to stay though and there weren’t that many choices of hotel. I found a decent VH flight and hotel deal with The Fairmont, which looked lovely, then frantically started reading hotel reviews and recommendations for where to stay or where to avoid. I also loved the look of the rooms at the Watergate Hotel - decisions, decisions. 🤔

Having had a quick look at what was close to each hotel, in terms of restaurants being close by, we tried to book the VH deal with the Fairmont. However, VH had other ideas. Booking was a nightmare - the website just wouldn’t accept the booking, so we tried booking over the phone instead and that proved impossible too. Over the course of a week, I had three separate ‘booking’ references, but no actual booking. There was apparently a problem with Virgin’s system connecting to the hotel, and despite many promises that they would get it resolved and call me back, they never did. So a week later, I lost my patience and told them I’d book separately. They tried to tell me I couldn’t go elsewhere as I had a ‘booking’, but then owned up that I didn’t when I told them that a deposit had not been taken and I had received no email confirmation of anything.

I went straight on to the Virgin Atlantic site and booked our flights myself. The booking went through and all was well. We now had a bit more time to research hotels, as we were no longer restricted to the handful that VH had.

After quite a few weeks of indecision, we eventually plumped for The District by Hilton Club. It’s located between Georgetown and Dupont Circle and seems to have very spacious rooms - I do like my space!

Anyway, on to the introductions. For those that haven’t read any of my trip reports, I’m Jo and my husband is Martin. This is us on last year’s holiday at Lake Louise.

Our planning for Washington took a while to get off the ground. In fact, we only really looked at it properly a fortnight ago. There were a couple of exceptions to this though - in July we applied for a couple of tours, one to the White House and one to the Pentagon. We’ve recently had an email to say we’ve been granted a White House tour, but are still waiting to hear about the Pentagon.

Our planned itinerary might need a couple of tweaks, depending on the weather, but this is what we have scheduled:

Travel Day - we’re flying from Heathrow and are due to land at Dulles airport at 3 pm, but haven’t a clue how long it will take to clear the airport and get to our hotel. Once we’ve dumped our bags, we’ll probably head out to get our bearings in the local area and find something to eat. We’ve deliberately left this vague, as I’m usually rubbish at staying up on the first night.

Day 1 - our White House tour is scheduled bright and early at 7:30 am. 😯 At least the time difference should help us be up early. By all accounts, the tour only lasts about 45 minutes, so I imagine we’ll be looking for breakfast soon afterwards! We’re also going to try and get tickets for Washington Monument this morning - we’ve had no luck pre-booking them online as it’s only just reopened after being closed for 3 years. However, they have saved some for those that queue up on the day. We plan to spend the afternoon looking around the various memorials.

Day 2 - We’ve planned to visit a couple of museums today. The National Museum of American History is on the list, followed by wandering the Mall and seeing where else we fancy exploring. We hope to wander through Georgetown tonight to find somewhere to eat.

Day 3 - This is the day we’re hoping to get clearance to visit the Pentagon. As we’ll be close by, we’ll follow this by visiting Arlington Cemetery. We then hope to go back to view the memorials at night - they’re supposed to look beautiful all lit up in the evening.

Day 4 - We have tickets for the Capitol Building today, and hope to follow that with the Supreme Court and Library of Congress. We’ve booked dinner tonight at Joe’s Seafood, Steak and Stone Crab, which gets great reviews.

Day 5 - Today is our last day and has been reserved for packing, checking out and then visiting the National Archives. We’ll nip back to the hotel to collect our cases, before heading off to the airport at about 4 pm for our flight home.

And that’s it. The packing is nearly done - just the last few little bits to go in tomorrow once we get home from work and then we’ll be heading down to the Premier Inn on Bath Road, ready for our flight on Friday morning.