i really wanted to do something fun for my 25th birthday, and nicolaus and i had talked about taking a trip out to dc to visit some friends, so when i found cheap plane tickets over the week of my birthday, we decided to make the trip! our friends, nate and danielle, have a baby, eli, who's only 4 months older than niels, so it was sooo fun watching them interact and play together. i feel like niels learned a lot from him, just in the few days we were there.
aaanyways, here are a few of my favorite things we did, that i would definitely recommend:
+ air & space museum
+ seeing the declaration of independence/constitution/bill of rights
+ museum of natural history
+ museum of american history
+ brunch at founding farmers
+ shop/eat your way georgetown. or just stroll through the streets. it's such a cute area.
+ lincoln memorial/washington monument.
+ holocaust museum. if you want to secure getting tickets to see the full museum, make sure you book waaay in advance! we weren't able to get any, so we thought we would still go look at the few things open to the public. but, LUCKILY, when we went to check in our stroller, the lady working there loved niels so much, that she whipped tickets out of her pocket and gave them to us!! i was beyond thrilled. for some reason, i've wanted to go to this museum since i was a kid and read my first holocaust book. it was one of the big draws of dc for me. and the exhibitions did not disappoint. i've been to a handful of holocaust museums before, but this one was the most incredible/heartbreaking one by far. it made it all seem so real and tragic and was almost too much to handle at times.
+ renwick gallery
+ the white house. we had changed our original time to go see this, because of the weather, and i'm so glad we did, because someone was shot there right when we had planned on being there! then when we tried to go a few hours after it happened, there were secret security and news cameras everywhere and we weren't allowed to go anywhere near it. so we went the next day and it was pretty cool to see, but one day, i think it would be awesome to tour the inside of it.
+ walk around the potomac or find a hiking trail. i expected all the historical stuff in dc to be cool, but i was blown away by how insanely pretty it was!
+ day trip to baltimore. we were able to pack everything in we wanted to, with a day to spare, so one afternoon we were going to lunch, and since both babies were sleeping, we decided to drive up to baltimore! we ate some delicious food and had fun meandering around the streets and the harbor.