Can you hire a taxi to take you on an all day tour? If so what price do you think would be a fair amount for a family of four and how many hours do you think it would take to see some of the city sights, Arlington Cemetary, and Mount Vernon?

Being it's Memorial Weekend and we want a tour on Sat. a lot of the companies have canceled their day tours and we don't want the hop on/off tours. Any suggestions, as we are having a hard time planning something.

Hiring a taxi for the whole day would be quite expensive - contact your hotel concierge and they can either give you a price - or reco some companies for you to contact.

But you need to understand that a taxi driver - or car service driver - will just take you from place to place at your instructions - not give you a tour. If you want a real private tour - with the person organizing where you go and telling you about it you will have to hire a private guide - and pay both for that and for transport.

If it's just for transport I would never hire a taxi for the whole day - but just grab one from point to point as you need it.

Sorry - also if you want to do Mount Vernon and Arlington - both outside of DC - you won;t have much time left for DC itself.

And can;t believe tours are cancelled for a holiday weekend - this has to be one of their busiet times. Are you sure they're just not booked solid? Again - would contact your hotel concierge for more info.

I did contact our concierge at the hotel prior to posting my original thread and even though he was nice it didn't help too much. The only tours he could suggest were the hop on/off or a private guide which was too expensive. The only other tour similar to what we want from another company leaves at 7am and we'd have to get the kids up at 5am in order to be there on time and that isn't going to happen, way to early!!! Not going to stress myself out while on vacation. The tour we wanted from Greyline was canceled for those days not fully booked. The girl said it was because of the holiday weekend and things were going to be too busy especially with Rolling Thunder which takes place over Memorial Day. I can understand canceling it for the day but for three days!!!!

You mentioned that if we did Arlington and Mount Vernon in one day we wouldn't have much time to see DC so how do the tour companies fit it all in during one day? We figured we'd stay at Arlington about an hour and a half and at Mount Vernon about two. We know we won't get to see everything but that's ok.

How much would it cost to just take a taxi to Mount Vernon? Is there a better way to get there? Maybe we'll do that one afternoon and look around ourselves. If nothing else turns up then we'll have to just take the hop on/off tour even though it's not what we really want.

Still open to suggestions or names of tour companies.

Thanks.

Public transit, the Metro, is great!

You can take the Metro to just a few hundred feet from Arlington Cemetery. It's on the Blue line and you can locate stations at www.wmata.com even better, to find how to get from place to place, when, how much, travel time ... try http://rideguide.wmata.com

Do you drive? You might want to rent a car from Reagan (choke) National Airport for a day to visit Mt Vernon - which is also reachable by bus from the Huntington Metro station (on the yellow line) ... btw, National airport is on the Yellow and Blue lines.

The hop on/hop off tours aren't bad, although I do think they're a little overpriced. You might also check the website of www.washingtonwalks.org for walking tours in various DC neighborhoods.

BTW - sometimes it can take over an hour just waiting in line to see the house at Mt Vernon, and when you visit you shouldn't limit your time to just the house. Washington considered himself first a farmer and did quite a bit of experimenting .. it's worthwhile to see more of the site than the house.

Arlington Cemetery can take longer than your planned hour as well. Even if you use the Tourmobile for getting around within the grounds - it's huge - I would imagine you'd want to see the Kennedy graves, the Arlington (Robert E Lee) House, and the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I'd plan for at least 2 hours.

There's a company with a name of something like "about town tours" -- I've seen brochures for them ... not the slick publications like Greyline, and I don't know how good the tours are .. but I can say that the Metro is perfectly fine for getting you to most DC areas.

Well - if a private guide is too expensive - I can;t imagine a taxi for the whole day would be any cheaper. Why not just do Metro and cabs as needed in town? (Don;t understand this hop on/off mania - can think of nothing less convenient than waiting for some pre-planned bus to turn up.)

And rent a car for Mount Vernon/Arlington. Agree that Arlington and Mount Vernon will take the entire day between them in order to actually see anything - vs just check them off the list.

Thanks for replying. I'm still doing some research and yes, I've already contacted the company All About Town and their tours seem ok but the all day one leaves too early so we may take two different half day ones. I've also left several messages at a company by the name DC Tours and I can't believe first off that they don't have someone answering the phone as I called two different times plus they never returned my calls from either of the two messages I left. Not too professional in my eyes!!!
We don't want to rent a car while in DC so we plan on using the Metro as much as possible. I guess I'll have to decide on our plans soon in order to book the tours prior to leaving. We definitely don't want the hop on/off.

Of all the cities with the hop on/off trolleys, Washington's make the most sense. First, the Metro isn't very convenient for visiting many of the sightseeing spots. The Metro stations are often really really long walks to the actual sites.

Second, there are enough tourists to Washington DC that such hop on/off trolleys run frequently enough that you usually don't need to wait long.

The prices are too high, that I'd agree though.

I don't think you have time to do all that stuff at all (I can only imagine how crowded Mt Vernon might be on a holiday weekend). I agree you don't have to be at Arlington cemetery that long, but Mt. Vernon will take time, plus the travel to/from. However, taking a cab to/from there might make sense if you don't want to do the bus thing. Metro okay for some spots, but I agree the hop on/off bus does make sense in DC as there aren't metro stops near some things, so it saves time. I think they are fairly frequent so you wouldn't wait too long.

I would never in a million years hire a taxi for all day in DC, I imagine that would cost a fortune. I think most DC taxis are horrendous, anyway, about the worst in the world (the drivers are terrible, and so are the cabs).

We decided to book an all day tour that takes us to Arlington, Mt. Vernon and some of the sights in DC. We also booked an evening monuments tour so hopefully everything will work out. We plan on doing the Smithsonians, Ford's Theatre, Library of Congress, National Archives and Capital on our own. We know it's going to be busy and crowded the week we're there, but we're going with an open attitude knowing we may not get to see everything. While on vacation we don't want to feel constantly rushed so we'll be satisfied with whatever we do get to see and we figure if we miss some things it will give us a good reason to return.

I'd like to thank everyone for all the help they provided by answering all our questions. It's certainly made planning this trip a whole lot easier. Now I wish this week would go by fast as we can't wait to leave!!!!!!

Hi SGF, have a wonderful and memorable visit. Hope you can post a trip report after you get back home and settled in.

We leave this coming week but I will definitely post a trip review when we return in order to maybe help out others who will visit. Reading all the reviews and the help I've received here has been so useful I'd like to recipricate.