My sister and I have visited New York so many times that we have done all of the normal tourist attractions. As such, she wanted to take a trip somewhere else in the States. We had both done Philly and Boston, so our next trip was to Washington DC. We took buses down as they were significantly cheaper than the train and approximately the same sort of time.

I forgot how clean Washington DC looks in winter. A lot of the streets are really wide and with many of the museums being free, are pretty popular with a lot of people. Christmas time meant holiday time and the some of the museums had some really long queues.

We did what most people on their first visit would do including a tour of Capitol Hill, The Library of Congress and the Air and Space Museum that houses many historical artefacts like the Wright Brother’s first plane, or Amelia Airhart’s plane. I highly recommend taking tours of these places as they give you a better sense of the historical events that each place shows and brings your experience to life.

With many of the museums being free, we did pay to go to the Spy Museum, which houses the biggest collection of spy goods (fun, gadgety devices) and, naturally also has a James Bond exhibit. I recommend going early as when we left, the queue to enter exited the building.

We didn’t have a huge amount of time to really explore the city as we stuck mostly to the tourist trail, but I think there are a couple of other areas to explore and you could easily spend a week there visiting museums and different neighbourhoods. I’d definitely go back to check out 14th street a bit more – it’s where there seems to be a bit more of a nightlife and smaller cafes and stores to visit.