darboy

Anyone have experience with tour operators in DC? Our family of 6 (4 children), will be staying at the Radisson Barcello over Easter weekend. While we have a car, I plan to leave it in the garage instead of trying to navigate this incredible city. Cabs may be a problem because of family size, so thinking of Met and tours. Tourmobile is one choice (take orange line to Union Station from Dupont Circle). Anyone have any opinions or options? A second chioce is All About Town which picks up from our hotel(but costs $27 more for the six tickets). We could stop at Arlington cemetary on our drive in (would walk instead of tour bus), or wait and do it with the tour on Sunday. I'm having a hard time deciding on what to see Saturday evening. The Monuments sound wonderful. Would you suggest we take a tour for those also? Trying to keep costs down so any input would be appreciated. TIA

Underhill

There's a tour bus that goes around the mall and out to Arlington Cemetery; you get on and off as you want. By taking that you can see the major monuments for not a whole lot of money, and it's easy to do. For the rest of the time, just take the metro; you can get most places that you'll want to see.

Have a wonderful time--I'll be in Washington just before you and can't wait to go back.

Anonymous

Pay for tours only if it's really a TOUR that you want; for just economical transportation, stick to the Metro or even two taxis, for instance getting to the end of the mall with most of the memorials on Saturday evening.

BTW, the Metro line from Dupont Circle to Union Station is the Red Line, or Orange.

Anonymous

Ooops, that was supposed to read "Red Line, NOT Orange." Sorry.

obxgirl

We usually recommend people go with Tourmobile or Old Town Trolley (http://www.trolleytours.com/Washington.htm). OTT is the same hop on/hop off concept as Tourmobile and is in the same price range. They mostly overlap in sights with a couple of exceptions. Old Town Trolley includes stops in Georgetown and at the National Cathedral, both places tourists want to see that aren't accessible by Metro. Tourmobile includes Arlington Cemetery and the Jefferson Memorial.

A night time tour of the monuments is a great idea but I seem to recall you saying you wouldn't be arriving until late afternoon. Most of the nighttime tours start in the 6-7 timeframe and go for a couple of hours. That doesn't give you much time to check into your hotel and have dinner.

Heres what I would do:

Saturday: Check into hotel. Take the metro to the Mall and have a look around. Or walk to the White House. Dinner (try Pizzeria Paradiso at Dupont Circle...fantastic pizza and inexpensive).

Sunday: Hop on/hop off tour.

Monday: Check out of hotel early and go to Arlington Cemetery (opens at 8 am). You'll be in Wmbg between 1-2 pm.

M_Martin

We recently took a night time tour of the monuments with our family of four. We chose Zohery tours because they picked us up and delivered us back to our hotel. Our tour took much longer than anticipated because some in the group never made it back to the bus on time! Since you will be paying for six, I would look into hiring a limo (or maybe All About Town or Zohery would do a private tour for you for around $150). While on our tour we saw a small group at several of our stops in a stretch limo...and wished we had thought of that!

We tried to do the hop-on hop-off trolley but gave up after waiting too long (trolleys were full).

uhoh_busted

This weekend the cherry blossoms will be in bloom -- nighttime tours are simply lovely as most of the trees are flooded with light. First time I ever saw them was at night, when I moved here, 30 years ago. Wow. It's gone so fast! Trees may still be in flower next weekend. Some bloom earlier than others.

gail

Since you will have a car, it is easy to do your own self-tour of monuments at night - we did that this summer and found places to park - or just drive by.

One thing you can not do is see the White House at night (or during the day) on your self-drive tour. Roads around the perimeter are so restricted that you can barely catch a glimpse of the White House. There is parking, but it is quite a hike from the White House and the area is not all that well lit - kind of creepy - at night.

You can drive to Arlington, park your car, and book a Tourmobile of just Arlington from the visitors center. It is really quite a distance to walk around Arlington yourself.