Washington D.C.: Dos and Don’ts When Visiting with Kids

Happy Tuesday, everyone!! We just got home from our Washington D.C. vacation with our two littles (almost 4 & 15 months) and while it was a mostly great trip – there are definitely things I would do differently if we every went back again with little kids. Let’s jump into it!

Washington D.C.: Dos and Don’ts When Visiting with Kids

We had 3 days in D.C. with the goal of sight seeing as much as possible – there are TONS of museums, memorials, history and architecture to see in the city so we tried to fit in as much as possible. We got about half of our goal crossed off our list, and I’ll explain why below. SO. Let’s start with the DON’TS.

DON’TS:

So, we decided that instead of ubering around the city (because Ubers don’t have carseats that fit children under 2 – and we did not want to drag our carseat around the museums, etc), that my mom, the kids, and I would all fly and my dad and husband would drive our car. That way, once we got to the city, we could drive around, be able to leave the car seats, and get from point A to point B a little easier.

Now that you know what our ideal plan WAS: DON’T do this. Washington D.C. is one of the LEAST car friendly cities that I have ever been to. In all my research prior to this trip, I did not see anything about parking (street parking / garages / parking lots / etc) being an issue, but we found it to be the biggest one of all. We didn’t move my car from the parking garage we parked it in one day one ONE TIME. There simply is nowhere to park. Street parking is iffy at best, we almost never saw any open parking, the parking garages are almost all valet parking for hotels and spread out very far and there are NO parking lots anywhere. I expected the museums to have their own lots or at least a community lot like St. Louis / Nashville / Chicago, but there is not.

So, our only option was to either Uber (and not have Noah in a safe or appropriate car seat) or walk every where. Walking worked for the most part, but the museums were at a minimum 30-40 minute walk from our hotel. We also did not bring our wagon to the museum because the website said no wagons, so that meant either someone was carrying/wearing Noah for a 35+ minute walk + our museum time (that isn’t comfortable for me while pregnant) OR my 4 year old was having to walk the entire time. Again – this isn’t completely non-feasible; we totally did it! But I would have preferred having our car with car seats available. And like I said, while Uber DOES offer a car seat option, it only offers car seats for ages 2+ (no rear facing that I’ve found) AND we were not able to get a single one while in D.C. There just were not Ubers with carseats around or available in the city. We tried 4+ times during our trip to get one with a carseat and were unsuccessful each time.

The last thing I’d say – stay a little closer to the monuments and the museums. We stayed on Dupont Circle, which was beautiful, but also not super close to things for walking purposes. So if we were to go again, we would stay at one of the hotels located closer to the attractions of the city.

Okay, now onto what DID work and what we’d do again!

DOS:

So, we realized that even though the website for the museums says no wagons, that isn’t really a hard and fast rule. Dozens of families had their wagons and the security said as long as they can see into the bottom of your wagon, you’re fine. So we’d definitely bring our wagon into the museums next time. I’m a rule follower so I was a little annoyed that the web rules were really just suggestions, but it is what it is!

We also LOVED the wagon for our sightseeing around the outdoor memorials! It was SO GOOD and easy to navigate around the sidewalks and around the buildings and food trucks. The only downside of the wagon is you have to close it up and wiggle it into the restaurants because a large majority of the restaurants have narrow steps and no ramps.

Another big “do” would be to plan some wiggle room in your day to eat as you go – we didn’t realize how many yummy food trucks are out and about near the monuments that were so fun to stop and grab a snack or treat or even lunch! We also had some lunch / dinner places in mind but ended up eating other places that were close to where we ended up sight seeing.

DO make reservations as many places as possible and check ALL reservation requirements! We made as many of our reservations ahead of time as possible and that was great! We made dinner reservations, museum reservations when needed (not all museums NEED reservations – so check the ones you are planning on going to), and reservations for the zoo/botanical gardens. Also – CHECK which ones are weeks out. We went to make our reservation for the air and space museum a week before our trip, and found that the reservations were booked almost 3 weeks out so we weren’t able to get a reservation for that museum!

All in all: we had a good trip. There are tons of things I’d do differently, and I think after this trip, I’d probably wait until I had bigger kids who did not require car seats / strollers to get around to do this city again. But is it possible to enjoy with littles? Absolutely!