jacon12 said:
"Just be careful with the museums...everything closes at 5:00 and there aren't any other clean/easily accessable public restrooms in the mall area (ask me how I know that )."
This oughta be good. Nate, how do you know that?
Thanks for the tips!
Jarrell
Maybe I should have said "
don't ask me how I know that." I'm not much of a story teller, but I'll try...
This particular trip to DC was actually a Girl Scout function (my sister was a member, my mother was a leader), and my father and I were invited along to fill up the extra seats...err..."share the experience." (Actually every scout was supposed to have a parent (or a friend's parent) along...less paperwork that way I think). Anyway, the other troop leaders had decided to make the trip an all-day event (they either had to make it a rather short trip or a rather long trip, because the bus driver was required to sleep for four hours once he hit a certain time limit). Of course it's never fun to get a bunch of elementary-school kids on a bus early in the morning, but to make it even better, several of us got motion sickness on the way there...
After waiting in line for a couple of hours (in sweltering heat that caused several to take quite ill), we took a short tour of the White House (this was pre-9/11), and then it was basically "you (along with your family, or a friend's family) are on your own."
Okay, cool, now we don't have to stand in line any more. Yeah, cool until you realize it's only 11:00 in the morning, and we can't get back on the bus until 8:00. Needless to say, it wasn't much fun to walk around outside in the 90++ degree heat and humidity, so we spent the next few hours inside various museums. Then 5:00 rolls around, and they kick everyone out. What do you mean you close at 5:00?!?! It's the middle of July!! There are hundreds of tourists here who want to see the museums!! Oh wait...the Smithsonian is run by the government...that explains it.
Not until you have three hours to kill do you realize that there really isn't anything in the mall vacinity that isn't government run, meaning at 5:00 pm the world basically stops turning, everybody who knows where things are leaves, and you're stuck in the middle of a grass field in the capitol with a bunch of other touristy-type people who don't know any more than you do. Suddenly 8:00 looks a looooong ways away.
We walked through the memorials and monuments, took some pictures, and then decided it would be good to hit the restroom before venturing back to the meeting-point. Usually this is standard proceedure, and restrooms are easy to find in areas with heavy tourist traffic. Nope, not in Washington DC. ALL of the museums are closed, and with them, all of the restrooms. You would think the national mall would have some facilities of its own, but again, nope...at least none that we could find.
I think we finally found one somewhere close to the memorials, but it wasn't very pleasant ('nuff said
).
Okay, enough of my lousy story. Yes, the museums are nice, and if it's a once-in-an-eon trip, I would definitely stop to take a look. Hopefully they've constructed some restrooms by now, or at least improved upon what did exist, but I would bet everything still closes at five. As far as I'm concerned, the half-a-dozen or so trips I've made over the span of my lifetime are sufficient to last me the next 30 years...
).
.. so I know exactly what you're talking about. Come 5pm and that is the most deserted place on the planet except for the tourists that don't know exactly what they're to do next. I warned my wife about the heat and also about how far out in the boonies we will probably have to go to find a room. I've told her how huge the Smithsonian is, that it would really take a week or more to see it all depending on how long you actually stooding looking at each exhibit, but I may as well been whistling in the dark, I've lost the battle.