Washington DC in the Fall

At least a few years ago I had promised to take Austin to Washington DC.  We FINALLY did it this fall!  We rented an AirBNB in a neighborhood in the south east section of the city that is being totally revitalized.  We had this awesome little basement apartment.

And immediately after checking in, we headed over to the new Apple store in this awesome old building.  Austin's phone had locked up as we had parked the car in Detroit...not good. But the Apple store people were able to revive it and he didn't even lose anything!

Our first stop the next morning was the capitol and library of congress.  It was pretty overcast and threatening rain.

While we don't have royalty in the USA, the capital sure has some areas that are worthy of that title -just beautiful!

I found the library of congress to be pretty amazing.  I had never been there before and it was quite impressive.  Apparently, not as many people use it now in the internet days but it's still impressive.

We ended up getting soaked as we left the capital and LOC and went to the air and space museum.  Like, really soaked.  But Austin didn't mind and enjoyed it all!

The weather the next day was MUCH nicer!  These were apartment houses across the street from where we were staying that have been restored.  They were so pretty!

Next stop was Arlington Cemetary - the clouds started rolling back in but it was still a nice day.

I enjoyed Arlington more the last time I was there - much of it was under construction this time.  But Austin got a lot out of it.  It really is a moving place.

Later we went to Ford Theater where Lincoln was killed. There is a small museum across the street that had this amazing stack of books - every single one is about Lincoln!!!

Madison and I had done a monuments buy moonlight tour when we went to DC so I wanted to do the same with Austin - and it didn't disappoint other than being FREEZING cold!

Of course, we had to get pictures of ourselves in front of the Washinton Monument which is pretty cool at night.

Do I look cold?  I was wearing almost everything I brought with me and was still freezing!

This was probably the one memorial that Austin was the most excited to see.

Standing at the front of the Lincoln Memorial looking out to the Washington Monument.  Such a cool vantage point.

The monument is also pretty cool on a sunny day. 

On our last day, Austin wanted us to go somewhere that I had never been and wanted to go. So I chose the National Arboretum.   Wow am I glad we went there!  It was super cool.  This pine didn't look like anything special until you got up close to it and saw how long the needles were.  Austin was NOT thrilled that I needed him in the picture for perspective!

Although it was fall, so many trees were blooming and just spectacular all around.

I thought this view of the capitol was pretty cool looking from the arboretum.

We took the stairs way up into the top of the greenhouse. Austin humored me with a picture up there but was hanging on for dear life. He is not thrilled with heights and especially when you can see through the metal grate floor!

I have no such fear and loved being up in the tops of the trees!

From the outside looking at the greenhouse, you can get a better perspective of how high up we were!

And then it was a wrap! We hit the metro to take us back to the airport and home we went after a great little trip to our nation's capitol!