Last week I was fortunate enough to have a friend come and visit from Utah. We spent her first day here in DC by ourselves. That’s right, with no kids!

Q: What do you do when you have a whole day with a girlfriend in the city with no children?

A: Whatever you want because there isn’t anyone there to complain.

We decided to drive right to the main drag and since it was early in the day we found a perfect parking spot right by the Washington Monument. We parked and decided to just walk. We wanted to talk and catch up and gossip and complain and laugh and just be together. We started at The Washington Monument and headed toward The Lincoln Memorial.

It was a beautiful Spring day. And as you can see from the pictures, it was not very crowded at all.  On the way back we stopped at The WWII Monument and snapped some photos with our home states.

Then we kept on walking back towards The Washington Monument.

Once we got there we just kept going towards The Smithsonian. We went into the first building we walked by and found an awesome food exhibit.

FOOD: Transforming the American Table 1950–2000

We learned about Julia Child and were able to look into a replica of her kitchen. We also saw The World’s First Frozen Margarita Machine along with many other kitchen appliances. The exhibit showed the changes in appliances and food trends over the past 50 years. Having been a Nutritional Director in my former life this exhibit was so interesting. If you have any interest in the changes and trends that food have taken you should go and see this exhibit.

We also walked through an exhibit called America On The Move.

America On The Move

From the coming of the railroad to a California town in 1876 to the role of the streetcar and the automobile in creating suburbs to the global economy of Los Angeles in 1999, America on the Move takes visitors on a fascinating journey.  

We were like kids in a candy store taking pictures of cars, trains, buses, and boats. I am pretty sure we annoyed several groups of adults who were walking through in an orderly fashion. With boys that love trains and planes, we did think about our kids for a little while on our girl’s day, and got plenty of pictures for them.

After we walked around for a while we were ready to eat and have some time outside on such a beautiful day. We headed out the opposite way then how we entered and found ourselves in the middle of  the most beautiful blossoms! The trees right outside were gorgeous. Most of the trees had already lost their blossoms due to the rainy and windy weather we had been having. But somehow these trees kept their blossoms.

After playing in the trees and taking maybe a thousand pictures (really we only took 50 or so) we ate (you can read that post here) and started walking back to the car. On the way back we found some interesting photo opts.

We were in the city for only about four hours or so but we were able to fit in quite a bit of education and a lot of quality fun time.