One Day in Washington DC (Georgetown, National Mall Monuments, & trying Half-Smokes!)

Good morning from Washington DC, the capital of the United States. We have been to DC once before back in April of 2016 and we have been so excited to come back. There is a ton to do in DC and this video is not going to be a comprehensive guide of everything there is to do here between having the van and having Kona with us this time. It's a little trickier but we plan to spend the day exploring some cool areas, checking out monuments, learning history, and of course eating food. And first up we're in Georgetown, the oldest neighborhood in DC and is now actually a National Historic Landmark. Georgetown began as a Maryland tobacco port in 1751, 40 years before the establishment of DC. It later became an originating point of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal which operated between 1831 and 1924 and runs along the Potomac River between DC and Cumberland, Maryland. A mile of the canal runs through Georgetown as you can see behind me so you can explore it here in town or you can explore the entire thing by bike or by foot along the 184.5 mile towpath trail. We just grabbed some coffee from a spot called Baked and Wired which is a delicious bakery and coffee shop here in Georgetown. But if you go here prepare yourself to be insanely overwhelmed by all the delicious treats they have to choose from. It's very hard to make up your mind on which one to get and we may or may not have gotten a little something something to enjoy later. We've headed southeast of Georgetown to the National Mall which is the part of DC where you'll find iconic monuments to the White House, U.S. Capitol, and tons of museums. There is so much to see in this area and we're going to walk around with Kona and try to see as much as we can and share some fun facts along the way. Our first stop at the National Mall is the Lincoln Memorial which is in honor of Abraham Lincoln the 16th President of the United States. And one thing that's super interesting about this memorial is that sitting down the statue is 10 feet tall but if the statue were to stand up he would be 27 feet tall. Another thing we thought was interesting was that architect Henry Bacon modeled the Lincoln Memorial after the Parthenon in Athens, Greece and there are 36 Doric columns each representing a state at the time of Lincoln's assassination. We also think that the view from the Lincoln Memorial is one of the best views in all of DC. You have the reflecting pool, the Washington Monument, and you can see the Capitol off in the distance. Reflecting pool. It's about 18 inches deep on the sides and 30 inches deep in the middle. We made it to the White House but unfortunately we're not able to get close to it right now. On the south lawn they basically have it barricaded completely. You can barely even see it and on the north side of the White House they have a demonstration happening right now so the road is closed. But the White House is the workplace and residence of the President of the United States and John Adams, the second president, was the first to ever live in the White House. The White House is six levels. It has 132 rooms, 35 bathrooms, 412 doors, 147 windows, 28 fireplaces, 8 staircases, and 3 elevators. You can also do a self-guided tour of the White House on Fridays and Saturdays and the way you do this is you walk up to the front door, knock gently, and ask politely. Not really. To do this you have to submit a request to your local congressman between three weeks and three months before your visit. We've never done that but that will be really interesting and really fun to do. This is the Washington Monument which honors the first U.S. President George Washington and upon its completion in 1884 it was the tallest building in the That is until the Eiffel Tower was built and took that title. The monument was constructed of over 36,000 marble blocks which are held together by just gravity and friction. No mortar was used in the process. However, in 2011 a rare 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit the area and damaged the monument and they used metal to help reinforce some of the areas while repairing. You may notice that the color of the marble differs a bit and that's because in 1854 the Washington National Monument Society ran out of money and construction stopped and 25 years later the U.S. government took over and completed the upper two-thirds of the monument but they used marble from another quarry. They actually have an observation tower at the top of the Washington Monument and they have limited tickets available for you to go up to the top and see D.C. from above but we're just gonna enjoy it from ground level. One of the coolest things about D.C. in our opinion is that the Smithsonian Museums as well as some of the other museums in town are totally free to access. Last time we were here we went to the Air and Space Museum and this time we hope to go to a new museum but the two museums we wanted to visit the most the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the National Museum of African-American History and Culture both require timed entry tickets and are sold out. So if you want to visit any museums while here in D.C. make sure to check out tickets in advance. Not all of them require you to get a ticket in advance but I know at least those two do. We decided to track our walk on all trails and it ended up being nine miles long. There's actually a lot more we wanted to see but getting tired or getting hungry and we're starting to enter the hangry zone. And deciding where to eat lunch today was so hard because D.C. has tons of great restaurants and basically any cuisine you could think of but we wanted to eat something that was iconic for the area and we came across a food item called a half smoke and we'll tell you more about what that is in a bit but we the place to get a half smoke in D.C. is Ben's Chili Bowl. Ben's Chili Bowl has been an institution in D.C. since 1958 when newlyweds Ben and Virginia Ali used $5,000 to begin renovating the building here on U Street in Northwest D.C. which was a thriving black neighborhood and nicknamed Black Broadway. And since then Ben's has been visited by many celebrities over the years and has played a huge role in the community and in history. They donated food to the March on Washington on August 28, 1963 where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous I Have a Dream speech and he even visited Ben's Chili Bowl afterwards to reflect on the day. And after MLK Jr. was assassinated in Memphis and unrest tore through parts of D.C. Ben's was a safe place for people to gather and was the only business in the area allowed to stay open during mandatory curfews. Getting to visit a historic institution like this is very special and we are so excited to give it a try. So a half smoke is similar to a hot dog but is usually larger, spicier and has more coarsely ground meat. It's usually half pork and half beef which is then smoked and then served on a bun with mustard, onions and chili sauce. Alright. Only one way to attack this. That is so dang good. The sausage is definitely, definitely more like a sausage than a hot dog. The meat is more coarse but we got the spicy one and there's also an original one but the spicy one is definitely pretty spicy. Just in case. Oh wow. Oh no. We have a hole in my bun. I got the gluten-free bun so it may not hold up as well. Well mine completely fell apart. I think the gluten-free bun just is not able to hold up all this hearty and well-seasoned spicy chili. The sausage has a really good spicy flavor too. It tastes just like a chili dog if I'm being honest but it's like a top-notch chili dog. We also got as you can see chili cheese fries because we walked a lot and we're so hungry. Chili cheese fries with hot fries, hot chili and melted cheese is the best thing for a pretty chilly day. Oh it's so comforting. For our final stop of the day we came to the Yards which is southeast of the National Mall and is right on the water. It has tons of shops and restaurants. It's home to the Nationals Park and it has some nice little spots to just sit and have a picnic and we're finally going to get to enjoy the treat we got this morning at Baked and Wired. As you can see we've got two cupcakes. This one is a dirty chai cupcake and this one's not for us it's for our friends that we've been staying at. We've actually been sleeping in the parking lot of their townhouse, bumming their wi-fi, drinking their coffee, their showers, internet, water, everything. So thanks Michael and Liz but this one is for us. This one's the Great Pumpkin. As we said earlier they have so many different cupcake options as well as just other treats in general. It was very hard to pick but we figure you can only get pumpkin certain times of the year so we had to do it. Oh that smells good. Oh man that's so good. Just from touching it you can instantly tell how just like dense and moist it is. Oh my gosh and this is I think cream cheese frosting. Best kind of frosting out there in my opinion. Such good pumpkin flavor. This is the perfect end to the day. And one of my words is it's hefty. This thing is hefty. So delicious. Cream cheese frosting is delicious but we've had it in the fridge all day long so it's kind of cool. I feel like that just kind of like keeps it all together better. The cake part though is just basically like pumpkin spice. Perfection. Cupcake bread perfection. That's unfortunately going to do it for our time in D.C. This time D.C. is a place you could come to a hundred times and likely never get bored. Thankfully we have friends that live in the area so we know we'll be back again and again. But next up we are heading to Maryland to meet up with some very special friends and experience something completely new to us. Testing it out. Hello hello from Washington D.C. reporting live from the United States of America. Why are cupcakes so hard to eat? I don't know how to eat this. This is how you solve what I think the number one problem with the cupcake is. The first bite or one bite is with frosting other bites not so and then you sandwich it. It's the wiener mobile. Honk if you love wieners.