This post is entrapment

Museums.

Seriously one of the only good things about that city is it’s got a shit ton of really good museums and most of them are free.

The Smithsonian Air and Space museum is a little ways outside of town away from most of the Smithsonian museums but it’s super cool because they have all these actual historical air and space craft just sitting there and you can walk right up to them.

If your traveling by plane, maybe try going to the pentagon? I hear the west wall is very nice

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Definitely take advantage of the fact that all the museums and the zoo are free. Few major cities with this level of amenities just let you walk in and pay nothing. The art galleries on the mall are very good if you’re into that sort of thing. The zoo is reasonably good if that’s appealing as well.

Rock Creek Park is a pretty uniquely rustic park for being in the middle of a city. Good hiking/biking paths. You can use capital bike share easily enough to take a scenic ride. Especially down Beach, which the southern half of was completely closed off to cars. The zoo can actually be got to off of Rock Creek Trail very easily.

If you like urban bike baths, the Metropolitan Branch Trail is also very good. Goes from Union station up to neighborhoods that aren’t often seen by tourists. You can hike this too, of course. On Saturdays, there’s a brewery on this path that has good BBQ set-up outside.

I second the Air and Space museum that’s way out in Virginia, near the Dulles airport. It’s kind of a pain to get to and you have to pay for parking, but you get to see some seriously historical craft including the space shuttle Discovery.

Get some Ethiopian and El Salvadorian food while you’re in town. Sadly, most of the good ethnic food in the area is in the suburbs, but those two have great representation in the city and are a bit unique as well.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing tour is a reasonably fun way to spend an hour and a half.

Take the Acela to Baltimore and sigh that it’s the closest thing to HSR America can offer. There’s a nice aquarium there, or a well-renowned railway museum if you want to keep the theme. At the time I went (2016) the Acela fare was like 3x the standard Amtrak fare, and I think there might even be cheaper commuter-rail options.

There’s a fiddly little island (Theodore Roosevelt Island) in the Potomac which would make for a nice hike, I recall it being conparatively deserted when I went.

Ride the Metro, like all day long. It’s lovely. Then you get an idea of how nice we could have it in the US. Just hanging out in the various pubic parks is also really nice. If you can suspend you disgust of the military, go to the evening parade with the silent drill platoon at the 8th & I barracks/the Marine Corps commandants house. I detest the corps, especially having been a part of it. But I’m a nerd for drill/parade stuff, and as a show of what people are capable of it’s a pretty cool demonstration. Don’t forget to spit on the white house lawn and the memorials to all the past tyrants too!

Just walk around! DC is one of America’s few great cities. Absolutely worth exploring on foot and via transit.

Idk but stay off the roads, DC car brain insanity is almost as bad as DFW area in Texas.

Theodore Roosevelt Island is pretty cool. I know you’re probably not into presidential monuments, but this is mostly just a nature park with a monument in the center of the island. Has some nice trails. Unfortunately I think you have to drive there though, although maybe you can get there from the Rosslyn metro stop? No idea.

Museum of the American Indian. I actually have not spent a whole lot of time there, but I went there for an indigenous peoples conference once and looked around briefly and it seemed pretty nice, so probably worth checking out.

Across the street is the United States Botanic Garden which is extremely impressive. Took my at-the-time girlfriend there once and she loved it, and I was surprisingly impressed also since I’m usually not that into gardens.

Now quite a bit outside of DC is the Great Falls. You’d absolutely have to drive there and that might be a little too far out of your way but I highly recommend it, it’s a really impressive park, the falls are beautiful and you can climb around on the rocks which is fun.

For nightlife, head to H Street. I’m not sure how gentrified it’s become at this point, when I lived there it was very steadily pushing east. If you go to the United House of Prayer for All People though, what they used to do is every I believe it was Friday night, they’d have a big fish fry on the street. Fried whiting or shrimp (the shrimp is better imo) with hushpuppies and fries and homemade pink lemonade. Absolutely delicious. Not sure if they still do this though, but I hope they do cause that shit was amazing.

C&O canal and the MD/DC side of great falls. lots of cool hydroengineering structures there too