Spring Break 2025: Part Two, Washington, DC by Xavier Dupuy

Wow, what a trip. First off, I would like to say that DC was definitely my favorite part of the road trip. There are SO MANY cool things that you can do there. Consider this post a list of just a few of the things you can do there. 

We arrived in DC at around 6 or so, and met Molly and Mitch, and our new cousin, Lily at their house, just to say hi. Alexander made so many comments on the way there about seeing Lily, you would assume that he didn’t even think about Molly and Mitch for a second. So I would just like to say that it was really cool to be in their home and see them during a time that we don’t normally see them. Admittedly, though, meeting Lily was quite fun. Babies are such interesting creatures, and you really can’t help wondering what’s going on in their little brains. (Also side note–before getting to their house, mom accidentally put 1415 for the number of their address, instead of 415, putting us 10 blocks away from where we actually needed to be.)

After meeting them, we made our way back to our hotel, the Arlo, near Judiciary Square. We checked in at about 7:45, and went into our hotel room to settle in and decide what we were going to do for dinner. We saw that there was a restaurant downstairs, and we figured “let’s just go there.” We went downstairs and sat down, and then we saw the menu — an obscure tapas menu with crazy prices ($70 steak???) and nothing that Alexander would have eaten. We then asked them what places were around here, and they sent us to a pizza place just down the block. But guess what? We went and stood outside and a fireman walked out and told us that it was on fire and that it would be closed for a while. What are the chances? We went back to the hotel to ask about other options, and they told us about a Japanese place called Love, Makoto. It was good, but BOY it was a late dinner. We sat down at like 9:30 or something like that. You can believe that after all that, we were all pretty tired, but even still, Alexander and I watched Harry Potter on the hotel TV, just because it was on. THEN we went to sleep. 

This next day was pretty packed. We left the hotel at 8:30 and went to a Tatte (Like Latte) and I had an amazing strawberry turnover. Our plan was to meet some friends from Boston who were also in town and we were going to get a Capital tour by some people from Ed Markey’s office, but that wasn’t until 11. So, to kill time we took a long way to the National Mall. We walked by so many buildings that were courts or political buildings. Our first stop was at the National Art Gallery, which we arrived there right when it opened, and if you want a good time to go to a museum, right when it opens is the move. There was NO ONE there, aside from us and maybe one or two other people.

We were in there for a bit, and then we decided to leave. I wanted to go to Air and Space, but after walking toward it and seeing that there was a timed entry, we realized that time was passing by very quickly and we better be making our way to the Capitol. We met our friends there, and started the tour.

A lot happened, so I’ll just give you a quick rundown. They first brought us into the senate chamber, which was very cool. Then essentially they showed us around the rest of the Capitol, bringing us to a lot of different rooms from our country’s past.

After the tour, we all got lunch and walked along the National Mall. One of the fun things that we did on our walk was go to the Smithsonian natural history museum.

At the end of the walk, I ran around the reflecting pool, which was fun.

After that, it was about 5:00, so we said goodbye to our friends and went to meet one of my moms old friends for a drink. Finally, at the end of the day, we met another one of my mom’s high school friends and his wife and son for pizza at a very famous restaurant in the Georgetown area. 

We woke up the next day at about the same time, leaving at the same time, and having breakfast at the same place. We didn’t know what we were going to be doing until about 12:30, when we were going to meet Molly and Mitch (and Lily) for lunch, so we decided to head to the Mall and figure it out there. Since we arrived in DC, Alexander had been begging to use these electric scooters that were ALL AROUND the city. Seriously, they’re everywhere. So, thanks to Alexander’s persistent begging, we got one of the scooters and rode it around the mall for a while.

After that, we went inside the American History museum, and looked at a few exhibits before deciding to head to lunch.

We walked there, stopping inside an apple store that had the most fancy architecture I’ve ever seen. Once we arrived at the restaurant, which was called A Baked Joint, we had a salad for lunch, probably because all we had eaten over the past couple days was ballpark food, so that was a good decision.

After lunch, you would not believe how tired we were after walking so much, so we decided that we deserved to be lazy and go back to the hotel and rest. We couldn’t do it for too long, though, because we had a Nationals vs Orioles game to go to. We were meeting my dads cousin, Patrick, and his daughter, Ellie, at the game, because they lived in DC and we were getting to the game about an hour early. We got a quick drink before, and then went into the stadium. Immediately after entering, we entered the team store, as I was looking for my jersey for the trip. Alexander got a really cool cherry blossom nationals hat, Ellie got “the best hat she’s ever had” but I didn’t see the player I liked, so I went to the custom jersey area and got the player I wanted. The rest of the game was pretty typical, although the Nationals pitcher went 8 innings and didn’t give up a single run, so that meant that my 3-game streak to start the year of 20 combined runs in each game was over, with a final score of 7-0.

And we took the train home, went to bed, knowing that we had to wake up the next morning and head to New York, concluding the Washington DC section of the trip. Even though I’ve lived there, doing all this stuff put it all fresh in my mind, and I 100% recommend.