Union Station DC

[Cho Cho Charlie]

Spy Museum

 

[StriderGDM]

Unless things have changed, you need tickets for the Washington Monument and they typically "sell" (they're actually free) out by like 9:00 AM. (you get a ticket for a specific 1/2 hour.)

 

[SarahZ]

I had a five or six hour layover in DC a couple of years ago and was surprised at how much I was able to see. If you're comfortable using transit (and DC's is really easy to navigate), you can see many of the monuments.

I saw: the Washington Monument (didn't go inside), the WWII Memorial, the exterior of the Smithsonian, the Lincoln Memorial and Reflecting Pool (from a distance), the Library of Congress (no tour; just walked around inside), the exterior of the Supreme Court (with bonus protestors), the exterior of the Capitol Building (with bonus scaffolding), and the Folger Shakespeare Library (I spent about 45 minutes in there).

I still had time to get back to the train station, grab a snack, and wait for my train.

 

[Alexandria Nick]

Another good place to get food, if you don't like the offerings in the Union Station food court, is the cafeteria in the House Office Building. It is available to anyone (with the usual security check) and very reasonable.

Its also fun when Congress is in session and the bell rings alerting the staffers that they've adjourned, everyone's heading back to their offices, and YOU HAVE TO GET THERE RIGHT NOW. Man, do they scatter fast.

A tip on the Air & Space Museum. Its literally the second busiest museum in the world. Only the Louvre sees more people and even then its 8.5 million versus 8.3 million visitors. Natural History across the Mall is the third busiest and, if I remember right, five of the top 15 busiest museums in the world are on the Mall. On weekends, its mayhem in general. But, and I can't believe most people don't realize this, there's more than one door on all those museums. On a given Saturday, it feels like there's a thousand people trying to squeeze through the Jefferson entrance of NASM...and about six people on the entire planet that know there's an entrance on Independence (two of them are the guards).

If you're pressed for time, don't bother with the National Archives. There's only one entrance and the line moves impossibly slow all the time for no apparent reason. Mid-Week, no one even knows the Botanical Gardens are there (I call it the Plant Museum) and it has a scattering of office workers escaping for an hour or so.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Unless things have changed, you need tickets for the Washington Monument and they typically "sell" (they're actually free) out by like 9:00 AM. (you get a ticket for a specific 1/2 hour.)

In the past (?15 years ago?) you could order your ticket online.