Washington DC

The original plan had us with at least three days to see the Washington DC sites, as it turned out we had only two and tried to see as much as possible.  Our hotel was in Alexandria and provided a shuttle to the Metro and to Old Town in Alexandria.  If you ever plan a trip to DC be sure to book in advance, we couldn't find an hotel in DC with availability for the three nights we needed.  We bought two day tickets on the "On and Off" bus and used this to get to the most popular attractions and even did the night tour.

We also used the Metro, which some of you might find surprising as Denise is not a big fan of traveling underground.  Maybe the 1100 miles so far on the boat has softened her up.

Of course we visited all the national monuments and took pictures of all of them, but I won't post these as you are likely pretty familiar with them.

We did go to the marina we had reservations at because I wanted to see if was as great a location as it sounded.  It was a short distance to many of the sites and had a view of the Washington Monument and even had a railroad track just a couple of hundred feet away.  They were also impacted by the high water and the debris and had a constant clean up effort going on.

You can see how high the water is still in this picture of the park office just across from the marina.

We had dinner one night at Gadsby's Tavern in Arlington.  Whats noteworthy about this place is that it has been operating since 1785 and includes many of the founding fathers as guests, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Monroe and James Madison.  They even offer a beer from Thomas Jefferson's own recipe.

With the shortened visit we only were able to spend a few hours at the Smithsonian and chose the American History Museum, probably seeing only a quarter of it.  We talked about coming back.  Denise said she'd meet me there if I want to try it by boat again.  We'll see.  We're home now and I am off to Minnesota at the end of next week.  Maybe I'll post some fishing pictures.  The Great Loop resumes June 15 providing Tranquility is up and running again.