Washington D.C. with teenagers... and tight budget.

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There is a cool spy museum your kids may like. Also, have you checked out the paddle boats on the Tidal Basin? I think its under $30 for an hour for 4 people and its a great way to break up the day. If you're going in August, there still may be time to contact your Senator or Representative's office and see if they can arrange for your tour. I would also call them and ask about any other touring ideas. In most Congressional offices, there are interns who help families visiting DC with suggestions for tours, sites, etc. The get on/off all day buses work well for being able to hit most sites, but seeing them at your own pace.
If you are looking for budget friendly places to eat, two of my favorite "food courty" places to eat are at Union Station and in the Reagan Building (Federal Triangle Metro Stop). Both places have plenty of budget friendly options and variety so you don't have to worry about everyone agreeing on a single place.

Went on several trips many years ago. Really liked the National Portrait Gallery, the Botanical Gardens and don't forget to tour Arlington House at the cemetery.

The Smithsonian is free and you can spend a whole week in there easily. So is the National Zoo, but you'll spend a few bucks getting there. So much is free that I'd avoid anything that costs money unless its really high on your list.

If you have a car, Udvar Hazy is incredible - its where the Air and Space museum puts the stuff they don't have room for on the Mall - like the Enola Gay. Or the Space Shuttle. Its hard to get to without a car though - way out by Dulles.

If you are going soon this won't work, but if you aren't, look up your rep and get tickets for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing - watching millions of dollars being made is fascinating - but you need to get tickets through your congress person in advance.

For eating, avoid the mall, but if you are dead tired and are going to buy food at the Smithsonian, get a membership for the discount. Food trucks abound and if you go off the mall aways you'll find fast food.

When we went a few years ago, we really enjoyed the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It's another freebie. At that time you had to go to the ticket window early in the morning and get a ticket with a specific return time. Don't know if it's still the same. But getting to see the money being printed and such was really cool. You can get tours through your rep, but you don't have to. There are open-to-the-public tours as well--that's what we did and it was fine. (At least this was the case a few years ago!)

Definitely the Smithsonian--Natural History, American History, Air & Space should be good ones for the teenagers. Although I loved the American Indian the best, too!

We scheduled a Capitol tour through our local Representative's office. It worked out great. It was just us with the guide (an intern). So we could ask all sorts of questions, kind of breeze through things that weren't as interesting to the kids, take more time where we wanted. Don't know if you have time to do that still, but definitely worth a try. Each Rep/Senator should have a place on their website to send requests.

We didn't go to the White House but did stop at the museum/visitor's center/whatever it is just across the street. Interesting and free!

Another fun one was the Postal Museum! Sounds kind of corny but was actually really cool. My boys enjoyed that one a lot.

We also took the elevator to the top of Old Postal Square (is that the right name?). Washington Monument was closed at the time, so this was the next best thing. Great views!

Honestly, there is so much to do that's free that we skipped anything we had to pay for!

One restaurant we really enjoyed was in Arlington--Red, Hot & Blue. I guess it's a chain but we don't have them up here at all. Food was really good, huge portions, and fun atmosphere.

Thanks for the ideas!

I'm sure you have reasons for not going through a congressman, but I can tell you the tour is completely different if you do. We are not political in any way and have had no interactions with the rep other than booking our tour, which was basically all done through the website. We just talked to the guide to make definite day-of plans for meeting, etc. As I mentioned, we had a "private" tour. Just us and the guide and it was great. They even gave us passes to sit in the chamber of the senate and watch proceedings for a bit. We saw some of the public tours as well. There had to be about 50 people in each group and they all walked around with headphones on, listening to a tour. I don't know if it's always like that, but that's what we saw. I felt our tour was sooooo much better than it would have been in the big group.

Not sure why your DH doesn't want to do the Engraving & Printing. It's not a super-long tour so won't suck up your whole day. But we found it pretty interesting. And how often do you get to pose with $1 million???

If you only have three days, you are already pretty booked. Plan on half a day for each Smithsonian building you want to visit. Plan a long half day seeing the monuments. Arlington is an long half day - I wish we would have had more time there. Capitol tour is a short half a day. Holocaust museum is three hours. It can take half an hour to walk from one end of the Mall to the other.

Plan your time - the American Indian museum is near the capitol, doing those two together would be good.

Ford's Theatre is facinating - the basement is a museum

My kids liked both the new Spy Museum and the new Newsusum. Both cost us $50 for the 3 of us, and that was with a military discount. My teens spent the most time at the air and space museum. So much to do and see. The natural history museum was the most crowded when we went 2 weeks ago. Also, since the mall was torn up, we had to walk a lot more than I had planed. No relaxing on the mall.

My family went last summer - 13 year old DS. We went last year and thought the American Indian museum was really disappointing, and my husband's family is part Cherokee. We loved the Bureau of engraving and printing tour. We enjoyed eating at District taco, Shake Shack, and The Pi pizza place. We did the night monument tour as a private group so we got to tell the driver where we wanted to go and it was amazing. That was the best part of the trip. The red bus tour looked better than the old town trolley because the trolley was always full so no more people could get on where we were. Oh, the Lincoln museum and theater were great too.

We really like the Old Town Trolley Tours, but there are several tour companies to choose from. Driving in DC can be crazy! It might be best to drive to the nearest metro station and metro in. If you're staying at Ft Belvoir, the Hunting Metro (yellow line) station is the closest. If you're staying at Joint Base Anacostia / Bolling, Anacostia (green line) is the closest. There is not as much parking there, but I believe you can get a shuttle from the base to the metro station. In addition to the two food courts already mentioned (Union Station and Reagan Building), there are tons of places to eat at L'Enfant Plaza. One of our favorite places is the Old Post Office, but it's closed for renovations right now. There are so many wonderful things to see and you already have quite a list! If you can squeeze it into your schedule, I'd recommend National Archives and the 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon. We're pretty familiar with the area, so feel free to pm me if you have any more questions!

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The two things that do cost money that we can't miss is Mt. Vernon (George Washington's estate) and Ford's Theatre (Lincoln's assassination site). They're not that pricey. As a matter of fact I think Ford's Theatre might be free without the tour guide.

Mt. Vernon is worth the $17 or so entrance fee. I've seen deals before so Google it if you're interested.

Make sure you have plenty of time to metro in from Andrews. I'm not sure which stop is closer, Branch Ave or maybe Suitland but it's still the end of the green line. It can take 30-40 min or more to get into where the museums and monuments are, especially if you switch lines (colors) at Gallery Place (Chinatown, which is where the Verizon Center is and actually a great place to find food) or Metro Center.

NinaBella said:

Thanks. Great tips! My husband use to work at the Pentagon (before I met him) so he knows the area a bit. He lived in Springfield, VA and took the metro to the Pentagon to work. I was only planning one day for the Smithsonians. We are speedwalkers so we will see what we can.

My husband made reservations at Andrews AFB in Maryland. I actually thought he made them at Bolling AFB, but he is saying Bolling AFB bus will not even stop at the closest Metro to the base because the area is extremely bad, so he choose Andrews as it is a better area. He will not use the Metro outside of Bolling AFB and this is a guy who grew up inner city Detroit. LOL.

Right now we plan on arriving Monday by noon. Departure will be early Friday morning or early Saturday morning. Right now I am scheduled to work Saturday so I would need to be back in Florida Friday night. LOL.


My former boss currently works at the Pentagon and a friend of mine husband just retired from Bolling AFB last year. I know my friend home schooled her kids because the schools around Bolling were not schools they wanted their girls to attend. I will message them to see what they suggest as well.

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Branch Ave Metro is closest to Andrews. If you are driving it is a quick ride out the front gate, left on Allentown Rd, right on Auth Rd and right at the circle to the Metro parking area.

We lived on Bolling for a few years and sent our kids first to Catholic Schools - tuition required - and then to DC Public Schools over in the Palisades area - Key Elementary and Hardy Middle Schools. Schools were not equal in DC to say the least. The ones near Bolling were not acceptable at the time, and we were very lucky to get our kids into these.

I hope you enjoy your visit!

I am going to DC next week, so I loved all of these tips too. Especially the location of the food courts. For a money saver I bought gift cards to McDonald's and Subway on cardcash because I saw they are both close to our hotel. I have teens too so they will prefer fast food to sit down and it saves time. We are staying 2 blocks from the smithsonian and I am thinking of using Uber to get around when any destination is over 2 miles. I have never used Uber before, but I thought it might be easier than a taxi with a party of 5. Any advice on this would be appreciated.

Might check the Nat's schedule and see if they're home when you are there - something to do in the evening with the teens. Nice park, good food, Nats are red hot right now! Outfield tickets shouldn't be too expensive. Easy to get there on Metro, Green Line to Navy Yard station. Another option is DC United tickets, they play at RFK which has Metro access. DCU also has a good team this year and games are fun, even if the stadium is pretty much a dump. Safe though.

We just got back from DC a month ago. We spent 6 days there and could have spent several more.

Things I highly recommend:

-Get a private Capitol tour through your representative. By the time we knew that we did not get a White House tour, all the public Capitol tours were booked, so I emailed our local Rep's office and immediately heard back with an offer for a private tour, which we accepted. The intern spent about an hour showing us around and we moved a lot more quickly and saw a lot more than the public tours, which seemed very chaotic.

-When you are done at the Capitol, walk through the tunnel to the Library of Congress. It doesn't take too long to see the main exhibits but the architecture is AMAZING. Just gorgeous. Bonus: if you go through the tunnel, you don't have to go through another security screening.

-Don't waste your money on the hop-on-hop-off tours. They are pretty universally maligned on TripAdvisor as a waste of time and money. There is now a DC Circulator bus that goes around the monument area if you really don't want to walk (and it's cheap), but we walked from the Washington Monument to the WWII Memorial, to the Korean War Memorial, Lincoln Memorial and Vietnam Memorial in just a matter of an hour or so. It's not that bad a walk. We did not make it to the Jefferson or FDR Memorials because they're on the opposite side of the Tidal Basin and the day I had planned to walk over there (from the Bureau of Engraving & Printing) it was raining.

-Metro is super easy and very safe. We stayed at a family member's rental house in northern VA and drove to the Metro station near Springfield every morning. I never once felt unsafe.

-Take the bus tour at Arlington. It's a long walk between the sights there. It's very informative as well. You don't have to get off at all the stops, but if we'd had more time, I would've done more of them.

-My kids loved the Spy Museum. I thought it was a little pricey at about $20 each, but it was much better than I expected.

-The National Archives is a great place to go. It was amazing to see the original Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.

-We enjoyed the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Annex, but it was a hassle to get to, even with a car. On the mall, we went to the main Air & Space museum, Natural History Museum and American History Museum.

-We ate lunch in the city every day we spent there. My favorites were Shake Shack (next to the Spy Museum) and Potbelly's sandwich shop. They were some of the more affordable places we ate, as well. At Shake Shack, the 4 of us split 2 shakes and they had a water station to get free water. We also split a couple of orders of fries and had plenty. We ate at Good Eats near the Capitol and it was more expensive, but we could have shared fries - the orders were pretty big. Potbelly's was delicious, especially the brownie cookie! The one meal we ate at a Smithsonian museum was very pricey and I wouldn't do that again.

As someone who has lived in DC for a decade now, one of the best things about this city is that so much of the tourist-type stuff is or can be completely free. There are only popular museums in town that cost anything - Spy and Newseum, and Groupon sometimes has Spy Museum deals. You can easily spend days at the Smithsonian - and since you'll have a car, you can go out to the Udvar-Hazy addition to the Air and Space Museum out in Virginia that has the space shuttle and all sorts of cool things. Arlington takes up a big chunk of time just because it's so big, but again - it's all free. Same with the zoo, though you'd spend a couple bucks apiece on the Metro to get there because there's no convenient parking.

I would say you probably don't need to do any of the trolley tours for the monuments just because they're all pretty close together. WW2, Vietnam, Korea, Lincoln, Washington are all kind of one right after the other, the only ones that require any walking are Jefferson and FDR, but even those you can do as part of one big loop - it's definitely walkable unless your kids are young, and it can actually be a great way to spend an evening in addition to saving the cost of the tours. Especially for seeing the monuments at night (during the day it can get too hot for that, especially this time of year).

If you want restaurant suggestions, feel free to message me.

I would also skip the trolley tours, there really is no need. All the monuments except for Jefferson are pretty close together. Just walk and take the metro. That's a big savings.