Washington DC - Sam's Birthday

For Sam's birthday we decided to do a spur of the moment trip to Washington DC. We decided the night before and got on the bus at 7:00am for the four and a half hour journey to the 'Capitol'. The bus was actually pretty cool, it had a bathroom, free wireless internet and even power points at every seat to charge phones and laptops.
We arrived and ate at Union Station and made the short walk to the US Capitol, which is an amazing old building and where they hold congress.
It was boiling hot, around 32 degrees and we ended up walking pretty much all day.
We wandered down the National Mall. We visited the Simithsonian Museum which was pretty interesting. Sam especially loved the Revolutionary War section. I liked the First Lady section where they have each first lady's inauguration ball gown.
Washington Monument is being repaired after an earthquakes two years ago, so it was covered with scaffolding and you can't get very close, but we saw it.
The White House is pretty spectacular. They no longer do tours which sucks, but it was still a really cool building to see. The gardens out the from are gorgeous and very very well kept!
Lincoln's Memorial is huge! It's a little bit intimidating standing in front of such a huge statue of a impressive man so prominent in American history. The view from the steps of the memorial was pretty cool too, you could see along the reflection pool all the way up to the Capitol building.
It was much too hot to walk all the walk all the way back so we picked up bikes and rode. :)
We didn't get back to the city and our apartment until about 12:30 so it was a very long day, but it was most definitely worth it!