a trip to Washington DC- budget friendly tips

[HaleyB]

I think we will go to Washington DC this summer (I know, not great weather). Early June. By car. Family of 5 so we really need a budget friendly place to stay!

I think we will have 3 or 4 days. What are the top picks? From looking at visitors websites it seems like there are about 100 choices.

 

[VirataMama4]

I don't have any suggestions on specific hotels, but if you're looking for budget friendly I'd try priceline.com and name your own price! Or since you'll have a car you can always stay on the out skirts of DC in MD for a little less, but you'd have to pay parking which can add up.

 

[ziggystardust]

i went down there a couple of years ago after seeing a hotel suggested on here. I want to say it was the hyatt or the hilton on capital hill. It was an absolutely gorgeous hotel and had rates of around $400 during the week, but around $100 on the weekends. Don't know if this is still out of your price range, but make sure you check weekend rates as well. For them, in that neighborhood anyway, the busy time was mon-fri and died down on the weekends.

 

[bamagirl@hrt]

We went to Washington DC last June and had a great time! It was our family's first visit. We drove and stayed at Hotel Lombardy on Pennsylvania Ave. It's a very charming boutique hotel that has tons of character. It has a manually operated elevator with attendant! My kids thought it was so cool to "drive" the elevator. I found a AAA rate through Travelocity which was cheaper than the hotel website's AAA rate. Our rate averaged $140/night, which isn't bad for in the city. Weekend rates are much cheaper than weekday rates. Parking was an additional $35 or so per 24 hours. The hotel is about 4 blocks from the White House and 2 blocks from a metro station.

Since you are driving, I highly recommend a day at Mt. Vernon if you haven't been. We spent an entire day there and the whole family LOVED it! Purchase tickets online in advance to bypass the line at the estate.

You can also get tickets for the Washington Monument online. We had to pay $1.50 each to have them mailed to us, but that was sooooo worth not having to stand in line for tickets! We had the first trip up the monument for the day.

Another cheap but great activity is DC by Foot. It's a tour company that gives free walking tours of the monuments. The guides work for tips only. We found the guide to be very well informed (he had a degree in American History) and very entertaining. We started near the Washington Monument and concluded at the Lincoln Memorial.

The Smithsonian museums are fantastic! Our favorite was the Museum of Natural History. I'd read lots of advice about not eating in the museum cafeterias, and I would whole-heartedly support that if there was another alternative closeby! We had a marathon museum day where we went to three of the Smithsonian museums. We were starving and ate in one of the cafeterias. It was the worst meal we ate and it was over $50 for fast food for four. You're kind of a captive audience, though.

This is getting long, so I'll end here. If you have any other questions, feel free to PM me. Happy planning!

 

[darthspud]

I just went in October and DC is completely budget friendly... we stayed in alexanderia and took the metro in it is a lot easier in my book to do that the metro is every where but most things you end up doing are right along the mall anyways.. so start at one side and work your way down the smithsonia doesnt have the greatest hours (im sure in summer the hours are longer) it was like 9-5 and there are some much to see and do that it made getting lots accomplished hard... almost everything in dc is free... I would not waste the money on a tour but i would pick up a tour book (the eyewitness guide is great its the one I used) it will tell you how much (if anything) it will cost you... bring food and do picnic lunches the only place you cannot bring ANYTHING in is the capital building... lines do get pretty long for the capital and the archives but those are not to be missed specially the archives in my opinion anyways

Happy Planning! Its a lot of fun but just bear in mind unless you are there for a week straight you will not get everything done but thats ok cause it means you can go back

 

[Gigi22]

We visited D.C. a number of times, usually staying at Capitol Hill Suites, near the Madison Bldg. of the Library of Congress. The wonderful location is the main attraction to the hotel, which is fairly modest. There is a subway station close by, so it is quite convenient for getting around. The hotel itself consists of 2 separate buildings, which were converted from apartments. There is onsite parking.
We really enjoyed walking down the Mall, which is quite a walk! The Smithsonian aeronautical (aviation) museum is the most visited museum in the world. Also really fascinating is a trip to Arlington.

 

[JenLanDisney]

Check out this thread:
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2182553

We were in DC in OCt 2009. We had some of the yummiest most budget friendly Chinese food at Eat First. Take the metro to Chinatown and walk uphill from the Chinese Gate (it's huge and at the metro exit) less than 1 block. It's across the street.

 

[melk]

Almost two years ago we stayed at the Residence Inn Pentagon city, right across from the Pentagon. The room had a kitchenette, two queen beds and a pull out sofa. They also included a hot buffet breakfast every morning. It was within walking distance to a metro stop as well as a big shopping mall. If I remember right we got a pretty good rate with a AAA discount.

We saved on food by eating at the hotel and was able to pick up an evening tour of the monuments right there as well. We would pack snacks for the day. We enjoyed the different Smithsonian museums but I think our favorite may have been the day we drove to Mount Vernon.

We found D.C. to be a good budget-friendly destination.

 

[Shelly F - Ohio]

I would look for a hotel outside of the city but close the metro -AKA subway- hotels outside of the city are cheaper and you don't want to drive in D.C. even on the weekends it's busy. Plus at hotels in the city you will most likely have to pay to park your car usually $20-$25 a day.
If you stay outside of the city, you can then drive over to the metro station and park your car in their lot. I would take the metro to Union Station. Get off there and just outside the building are several tourist trams that you can buy a ticket for. Tickets generally cost $30 a person for an all day pass to ride the tram. You can hop on and off the tram as it stops at the different sites, monuments, & muesems. Once you are done visiting a sit hop on the next tram that comes by.
Great way to see the city and sites without the parking and driving troubles.

 

[kaywoody]

I can suggest a don't do for staying on a budget: don't take the tram/bus tours if you need to see a lot of stuff in one day. We paid for a two day pass thinking we'd hop off, see something, hop back on, etc. The buses come by so infrequently that we walked from one monument/stop to the next before the next bus came by and sometimes when we did see them they were already full so we wouldn't have been able to get on anyway. That was a huge waste of money for us. We probably walked around 5 miles total that day, but the weather was WONDERFUL in late June (at least compared to Texas!)

 

[KristinU]

If you guys are a camping family, or even would be interested in staying at a cabin check out Pohick Bay Regional Park in Lorton, VA. (www.nvrpa.org) We had an absolute blast there last year. Very nice facilities and maybe a 10-15 minute drive to the Franconia Metro stop. It was very convenient.

And aside from our Metro tickets and parking at the Metro stop and campsite fees, we pretty much didn't pay a dime. We just walked everywhere. A note: DS was 5 and we took our Maclaren and we were glad we did! We could have skipped it on the day we stuck around the mall doing the Smithsonians, but when we walked the monuments we were happy to have the stroller. Also, we brought along a cooler/backpack and just brought our lunches along - much cheaper and healthier than a $10 hotdog meal on the mall. We did have ice cream from a vendor though , so I take back the comment on not spending a dime - DS and I each spent a couple of dollars.

 

[mjkacmom]

I can suggest a don't do for staying on a budget: don't take the tram/bus tours if you need to see a lot of stuff in one day. We paid for a two day pass thinking we'd hop off, see something, hop back on, etc. The buses come by so infrequently that we walked from one monument/stop to the next before the next bus came by and sometimes when we did see them they were already full so we wouldn't have been able to get on anyway. That was a huge waste of money for us. We probably walked around 5 miles total that day, but the weather was WONDERFUL in late June (at least compared to Texas!)

We made the same mistake - I can't comment on the trolley (which seemed to have more vehicles), but we spent about 5 minutes on the bus total. It was faster to walk (and we ended up walking to each and every monument, and then back to the metro).

OP, I suggest Embassy Suites in Tysons Corner. There is a metro stop right below, and it's less expensive than to stay in DC. ES is great for a larger family - separate bedroom, kitchen, plus free hot breakfast and cocktail hour. We stayed at one in Dupont Circle, and spent $100+ more a night than a friend of ours at the Tysons Corner location, and their metro stop was only 5 minutes away from ours, but it took us 10 minutes to walk to ours.

And, I admit it, we took fruit, bread, peanut butter and jelly packets, bread, bagels, and cream cheese from the free morning buffet, and packed lunches!

 

[jojo0612]

We are also planning to visit a few days around spring break so this thread came along at the right time! Keep the tips coming!

 

[kbheap]

DH & I went a couple years back to DC. We actually stayed about 2 hours out for 7 days and drove to DC for 3 of the days. The drive was very nice and it didn't seem like a 2 hour drive. Check into areas around DC. I would imagine prices would go down outside of DC. Also, check into tours. DC offers a lot of free or inexpensive tours that will take a while to do. Our favorite tour was at the US Mint(?) where they make money. It was a fantastic tour. Have fun!

 

[kristinw3girls]

My family of % went this past summer. We stayed in the Holiday Inn on the mall. It was large enough for all of us. We also signed up for the free rewards program. By doing that we got free breakfast buffet each day. This allowed us to eat a large breakfast and just have a small lunch or snack at lunchtime. The hotel was very nice for the price and offered a buffet dinner that was reasonable too. There was McDonalds nearby (cheap meals too). I ordered tickets to many sites online and only paid for shipping. The other thing we did was buy the 2 day pass for the doubledecker bus. We used it the whole time. We were able to get on and off anytime, and a night tour was included. It was neat to see all of the monuments at night. It was very hot (100's the whole week) and we brought our own water and snacks for the room too. Enjoy!

 

[gardenergirl]

We were in DC last July (family of 4) -it was sooo hot! We experienced many days of metro delays, but they had the accident a few weeks before we got there. Always felt safe on the metro, but did not want to spend a lot of time there-was super crowded (even when not delayed) at rush hour in the morning, when we were headed out.

We stayed at two different hotels: One Washington Circle and The Liaison. One Washington Circle was near the university, convenient to cheap eats and had a full kitchen, and lots of room, and a balcony. We drove in, it was confusing (not a lot of Circles in Kentucky), you have to turn into the hotel immediately after exiting the circle on a one way street, and the hotel is on the left. Was walking distance to the White House. The metro stop was about a block away, across the park. It was around $150/nt., we booked through the hotel website about a week or 2 before arriving.

The Liaison was cheaper-$110/NT, -booked through Expedia, but was a longer walk to Metro (2 blocks or more). It's a business oriented hotel, used to be a Holiday Inn. Rooms were kinda small, they have a rolling office chair at the desk, and I must have hit my toe 20 times on that thing, every time I walked by. That's how narrow the room was. No fridge-we had a cooler. No outside food allowed at the pool area-which was a very cool, "trendy" rooftop pool.

We would definitely stay at the One Washington Circle again, but not so much the Liaison.

Take good walking shoes-my feet never hurt at Disney, but they did in DC!

 

[Brendasue]

My husband and I will be chaperoning a group of teenagers to Baltimore and DC the end of June through July 4th. Please keep the tips coming! Thanks.

 

[HaleyB]

Wow, you guys rock!

Lots of great ideas. Keep them coming!

 

[J. Galt]

Love D.C.! Can't wait to take the kids back someday. We went a couple of years ago with our two little ones. Technically, we were there for the National Institute of Health (to see a specialist for one of our kids), but we thought we would extend the trip by a couple of days and do some sightseeing. We got a rockin' deal through travelzoo at the Omni Shoreham. I want to say it was maybe $110 or $120/night. Wow! What a hotel! I told my dh that I was in love. The rooms were huge... we could have put another bed in the closet. They had a gorgeous pool area... not rooftop, more resort like, that we made use of every night. We went in August and Congress was in recess so I think that is why the killer room rate. It was hot... the tram was worth it for us with two little ones... the walking between the monuments would have been a bit much in that heat. The hotel is walking distance to the National Zoo... the zoo had evening hours in the summer which was awesome. The zoo is really cool... I live near Milwaukee which has a great zoo too, but they had a lot of different animals and you could get really close to them. In fact, its funny because we first met Happy the Hippo at the National Zoo (he was an iconic figure there). I was able to get close enough to him to practically see down inside of him (they were cleaning his teeth). Now Milwaukee has Happy! The National Zoo needed to make room for their new state of the art elephant habitat and Happy needed a new home and Milwaukee got him. I feel like he is an old friend.

The hotel was also right near a metro stop that we took down to the Mall. It was also near a whole bunch of inexpensive ethnic restaurants. We got take out each night and took it back to the pool to eat and swim. It was my kids favorite part! One afternoon while we were drying off in the room after a swim there was a knock on the door and a woman was there with a huge cart filled with desserts (brownies, cakes, cookies) and milk. They were handing them out room by room. My kids actually cried when we had to check out they loved the hotel so much. They were crying in the elevator when we were leaving and the guy we were riding down with joked that the hotel should pay my kids for free advertising.

To summarize my rambling... if you don't care about seeing Congress in session, try to go when they are out for summer break (cheaper hotel rates) and check travelzoo... truly some of my least expensive trips have been planned through travelzoo.

 

[lukenick1]

Subbing....we're considering a trip there too this summer