Jule's Adventures in America: Vacation Day 4: Washington D.C.

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There is so much to see and do in Washington D.C. that you really must stay for a week to take it all in. But obviously we didn't have that much time, so I thought it would be best for us to see the city via open-top bus.

Washington D.C. is fairly easy to get around using a map. The streets are named for states east to west and are numbered north to south. The one confusing thing about the city, though, is that it's full of squares on the intersections of these streets. At the square, though, there may be ten streets spurring off the square, so you must be really careful when going THROUGH the square that you stay on the street that you intended. When trying to get to our first bus stop I wasn't so careful. We walked for over an hour to get to a place that was only fifteen minutes from our hotel. My fault.

Once we FINALLY got on the bus we headed to the top. We started our tour by going through Georgetown, a historic neighborhood in Washington D.C. that is pretty "hip" due to the large number of college students and brightly colored homes that line the old street. Georgetown is actually older than Washington D.C. by about 40 years.

Example of the unique Victorian-style homes in Georgetown.

We also rode the bus through Foggy Bottom (where most the University students live) and along the Potomac River. The Smithsonian museums closed at 6:00 on Saturdays, so we didn't have time for much sight-seeing during the day. We decided that there were two of the nineteen museums that we wanted to see the most: The Natural History Museum and the American History Museum.

We stopped first at the American History Museum. There are so many things to see, but here are some of the highlights...