One of the most important things you'll have to consider when you come to Washington DC
is how many days to spend here. I'll help you figure that out.
HELLO! Welcome to Trip Hacks DC. My name is Rob.
I'm a tour guide here in the nation's capital. If you're coming to Washington DC
and you're looking for the best tips, tricks, and hacks for exploring the city make sure to subscribe to this channel and hit the bell
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And if you're interested in taking a personal tour with me you can check out my web site TripHacksDC.com
afterwards to see the tours that I offer. If you've taken a trip to Washington DC before leave a comment on this video and let
me know how many days you stayed for your trip, and whether you thought it was too much, too little or just right.
Otherwise,
let's get started... One question that I get asked a lot as a tour guide is how many days do I need to see
EVERYTHING in DC?
This is one of the hardest questions to answer because it's really not possible to do EVERYTHING that we have here.
I mean, I live in DC work in the tourism industry, and I still haven't seen EVERYTHING!
First things first though, you need at least more than one day just to see the basics. when people tell me that they're coming for
one single day
and they want to see all the monuments, the museums, the Capitol, the White House, and eat at a Michelin-starred restaurant, it
just stresses me out thinking about it. One day is simply not enough time and likely you'll just leave exhausted and
disappointed by all the things that you missed out on. To give you a sense of how much time you really need to budget, let's
just run through the major attractions one by one. So when you come here for the first time of course you want to see the
monuments: Lincoln, Jefferson,
World War II, and all the others. The monuments tour that I offer sees ten major and lesser-known
monuments on the National Mall, and it takes about three total hours. If you're self guiding your own monuments tour
I would say that anywhere from three to five hours is pretty realistic. Now when it comes to the museums the thing that you have
to understand is that the Smithsonian museums particularly are huge. They are massive. And if you're a history buff or an art
lover you could spend an entire day in just one museum.
That said, the Smithsonian has said that the average
"dwell time" is about two hours on average at each of their museums. To think of it another way there are about a dozen
Smithsonian museums located all around Washington DC,
so if you spent two hours at each of that would be two full days of just museums.
And that's ignoring the fact that there are a bunch of other great free museums that aren't part of the Smithsonian: the National Gallery of Art,
Botanic Garden, the Holocaust Museum,
just to name a few. And don't forget about the places that are more-or-less museums,
even if they're not officially so: the National Archives, the Library of Congress and the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. You're looking at at least
a couple hours of piece for each of those. If it's your first time in DC
you'll of course want to see the Capitol, take a tour and
Hopefully get a gallery pass or a floor pass. The Capitol tour takes about an hour
and then maybe another hour on top of that for the other stuff. If you're traveling with kids
you'll probably want to take them up to the National Zoo and
depending on how much you like zoos and how long the kids can last that can be anywhere from a few hours to an all-day
event. If you want to go to Arlington National Cemetery and do a proper tour over there
you're looking at another three hours at least. A lot of visitors these days also want to go to Georgetown,
maybe do some shopping or eating over there. That could be another half a day. And all the stuff
I've covered so far are just the standard tourist attractions.
Another question is what else you want to do when you come? Do you want to check out our best restaurants? or nightlife?
Do you want to make a small trip to Alexandria? or Mount Vernon?
I usually recommend leaving the National Mall at least once to go into some of the neighborhoods and experience our culture. Are there any
off-the-beaten-path sites that you really wanted to see? Another thing to consider is whether this is going to be the only chance you'll have in
your lifetime to visit Washington DC or
if you might come back for another trip. If you're only going to visit here once either because you're from out of the country and
don't think you'll ever be back, or for some other reason this is your only opportunity,
I would say that you should plan to spend five to seven days here to really experience as much as you possibly can. That amount
of time will give you a chance to see and do most of what you really want to and you probably won't leave with the
feeling that you missed out on something because you simply didn't have enough time. If you live nearby or you think that you might come
back to DC again in the future then a weekend trip maybe three days long should be fine.
That'll let you see all of your top choices
and it'll let you save a few things for your next trip. Another thing
I should note is that it's a really bad idea to try to plan your trip down to the minute. A good
Itinerary should leave some slack and should not be planned for every minute of every day.
Sometimes things take longer than you expect or you discover something really cool after you've gotten here,
or you just get really tired and don't want to over exhaust yourself. One of the biggest mistakes that I see tourists make all the time
is that they over plan their trip or try to pack too much into a really small amount of time and then they just get
so exhausted that they can't even enjoy it anymore. Of course over planning is not a unique problem to DC,
but... because we have so many free things to do
people do try to plan in more things than they would if they had to pay. I promise that spending more time here and
planning less into your trip will give you a better experience. And that's it!
Thank you for watching this video. If you found it helpful you can subscribe to this channel by clicking on the Trip Hacks DC
logo which is popping up right now at the bottom of the screen. And if you're coming to DC
and you want to sign up for a private tour with me,
you can click on the Capital dome on the left side of my head,
that'll take it over to my website TripHacksDC.com where you can see the tours that I offer. Enjoy your trip!