Can anyone recommend the best tour of Washington D.C.? I'm leaning toward Old Town Trolley Tours.
Also I'm interested in their "Monuments by Moonlight" tour. Would I be wasting my $ to do both tours (day & night) with the same service? This is my first trip to Washington, as you can guess. Thanks!

I live in DC but have never taken a tour. You might find the Washingtonian site really helpful - they have an area for visitors, and all the DC tours are described. http://www.washingtonian.com/tourist_page.html

I would definitely recommend seeing the monuments at night - it's a totally different experience, and is quite beautiful. The FDR Memorial is definitely my favorite at night - I don't ever go there during the day when taking out of town guests. Enjoy your trip to DC!

I live in DC and took an Old Town Trolley tour with out-of-town visitors several years ago. Its advantage is that the small vehicles are able to go into areas where the larger Tourmobiles cannot go, e.g., Georgetown. The disadvantages I found: (1) hard benches + poor suspension + potholes in city streets = not very comfy; (2) drivers attempted to entertain, being jokey rather than providing useful information (not my taste at all, but others seemed to enjoy it just fine); (3) stops at lots of hotels made for lots of wasted time.

I recently took the Tourmobile 1-hour trip through Arlington Cemetery and found its narrators much better than those I had with OTT (different tours, of course).

Based on these two experiences, I would recommend Tourmobile if you want thorough and more serious coverage of the monuments and government buildings, OTT if the light and superficial approach appeals more.

Suggest you search, lots of past discussions on these tours. They now offer a tour on spies, and if you like movies, there's Screen on the Green, free films by the Wash. Monumnent on Mondays, just after sunset. DC has it all! Most free.

I did the Monuments at Night tour several years ago and would highly recommend it. There is something about visiting these sites at night when they are all lit up that makes them seem more dramatic.