Washington DC

 

Spring break 2024 and we headed to Washington D.C. with both kids in tow.   Jordan and I have been to DC over ten times in the past two decades, but never with our children.

There is a direct flight on American Airlines from Greensboro to Reagan so the trip was so easy. The reason the trip was our choice for Spring Break was Lauren had to work a few days - now in Tyson's Corner - and one of our best friends, who lives in DC, was turning 40!   The dates all lined up and we thought DC would be great.  We had no idea this was the best Cherry Blossom time so along with it being spring break, the town was packed with people coming to see the Tidal Basin and the blossoms.    

While Lauren worked, Jordan took the kids on the metro to see the Museum of Natural History.   Amira liked the Hope Diamond, just like her grandmother.  We met for a nice dinner, confirming Tysons Corner is truly a wonderful area for food, drinks and shopping.

The next day was Saturday, which meant spending time with the birthday girl.  We went to the (new-ish) National Museum for Indigenous Persons, met our friends at the Museum of American History and had lunch.   We then ventured back to her house for college basketball and a night of celebrating our dear friend Sarah.   (Luckily the Heels won!)

On Sunday, we didn't realize you had to had reserved tickets for the Air & Space Museum, so we took a metro and a taxi to the Goddard Air & Space Museum out of the city that had all of the planes in the huge hangers.   This museum was cool.   We ended the day at the very nice Tysons Corner mall.  On Monday, while Lauren worked, Jordan took the kids on the metro to the Postal Museum.

On Tuesday, we moved from the nice Marriott to a Residence Inn a mile from Congress.   We walked the National Mall and took a bus to the Thomas Jefferson Museum to fully appreciate the cherry blossoms.  I even found Stumpy.  After this, we ventured to the National Portrait Museum.  I saw the new Oprah painting, stopped by a few rooms and toured my son around the Hall of Presidents.  I really appreciated my first viewing of the Obama paintings.  (Also, I found another Bartholdi Statue of Liberty mini!)  We ended the night showing our son the outside of Ford's Theatre and enjoying Hard Rock.

On Wednesday, we got coveted tickets to the small exhibit of Bond in Motion at the Spy Museum.   As this is my favorite set of films, I enjoyed it.  On Thursday, we toured Congress, which was such an amazing experience and a first for me.   We showed our kids the outside of major buildings and walked around.

Right before our flight on Friday, we ventured across from the hotel to the NASA Headquarters.  This place was amazing and had a few interactive areas.  We got a tour of the space, an overview of lobbying and to see a portion of their library.  We could have spent all day there, but we had to head back to Reagan Airport to our one hour flight back home.

DC, I am sure we will be back - so I will leave you so takes that did not make the Holiday card!

It’s a Small World after all - Disneyland Paris

Thanks to the Ligue 1 and the French laissez-faire way of scheduling football games, we missed the entire point of this trip - to attend a PSG game.  They had moved the game from Sunday to Friday less than two weeks before we left.   In order to offset this disappointment, I promised we could go to Disneyland.   

We left Paris in an Uber and an hour later we were in small, quaint French villages.   We stayed in a Marriott Vacation Club that was created to be like a village.  It was nice to have an entire townhouse to stretch out in, as well as amenities like pools here all while being 15 minutes from Disneyland.   As I always prep for these trips, I watched Ratatouille on the train ride.  It was easily of the best movies I have seen in years.

Disneyland Paris is divided into Walt Disney World Studios and Disneyland.   Walt Disney World Studios has the new Avengers campus, Pixar-land, Toy Story and some old school Studio items like Tower of Terror.   We started our day here and D rode the Tower of Terror for the first time.   We then did rides in each area, with D’s favorite being the Aladdin carpets, mine was the original RATATOUILLE, and Jordan’s was the Cars Road Trip.

We then set-off through the pretty pink hotel to the Disneyland entrance.  Disneyland is set-up in the five major areas like the original in Orlando, but has different rides.  We really enjoy comparing the Phantom Manor and Pirates ride to it’s counterparts in Florida.  They also have a lot of play areas to explore which was different.   My favorite ride was It’s a Small World - as always - and the North American part was comical.  I laughed so hard.   The other rides that were significantly different were two older rides that was a train ride around disney landscapes and a boat ride with miniature disney movie places.   The Tomorrowland also had different rides and we rode was not shut down due to wind.

The park is famous for its castle - it's smaller, pink and has a dragon in the basement. The entire castle is open to explore and has a sleeping beauty theme.

At the end of our day, we needed to eat dinner.  We went to their version of Disney Springs right at the entrance/train station which is like four stores and hilarious copies of American-type restaurants.  We settled on the only one open in the pouring rain - Rainforest Cafe.  

Our impressions were it was smaller and easier than Florida - we did all the major things in a few hours as it was not crowded.   I hated the food - the food has been my favorite thing at Disney and here it is terrible American fast food.   It was odd to me that the food was bad since we were in France?   Even the Pineapple whip was only half as good as Dole Whip.

The humorous part was from September to January, there are only five days the park is not decorated. We went during those five days and got to see some Halloween and some Christmas and some non-decorated parts.

I am sure we will be seeing Disney again, as my daughter has only had the pleasure of attending breakfast at Chef Mickey’s to meet Mickey and Minnie.   So she’s now due three trips to the Parks?  And will I ever make it to Disneyland in California?   So here's to see that beautiful pink castle and having kids who make you go to Disney.