Have visited DC several times, the last trip we stayed a week. The Holocaust museum and the 5 Smithsonian museums will take 2 days. Then the Botanical Gardens, Capitol tour, the monuments - plan at least 2 days for those places.

Schedule your tour of the Capitol through the Congressman of your particular district. If you wait until the morning of, you may not get a tour. Also, all congresspersons have summer interns who will take you all the way through the tour and that makes it much more interesting. We did the scheduling 30 days in advance by calling the congressional office and it was no problem to get the tour.

The metro is the way to go in DC. You can buy passes easily and the trains run on time even during the rush hour.

Don't miss a lunch or dinner at Nora's in Georgetown.

We did a tour with the Grey Lines or some bus tour company which was great. You buy the tickets right at Union Station and it is well worth the money. You can get on and off all day long and see everything there is to see.

Don't do cabs. Unlike New York and other large cities, the DC cabs rate by where you are going rather than the time traveled. It was outrageously expensive with the set rates for each area of the city.

NYC is a great city to visit. You will need at least 4 days to cover all of the sights if you are going to visit the different areas like Soho, etc. I haven't done the subway in NY but it is probably just as easy as DC but the natives are usually not as helpful as in other cities. When I visit NYC, I walk as much as possible and only cab it for long distances or when my feet or child have had enough walking.

we really enjoyed our trip to dc.
using the metro is easy, just take a few lessons from the metro people.
we really enjoyed the Spy Museum, its near fords theater.
it was well worth the ticket price. We booked the spy museum and the holicaust museum on line. to be sure we got in.
our first day we paid for the bus tour where you can get on and off at the different stops. we paid for a 2 day ticket
and thought that was a good deal, rather than trying to metro all the places it took us. We rode the first day from the start to the end of the tour. made notes of where we wanted to stop. the second day we made all the stops we had planned.
people at the hotel told us that the bureau of engraving was really worth the tour-- but you have to stand in line for ticket first thing in the AM. we were unwilling to wake up to do that, or for any other site-- just took our chances. the native american museum was outstanding. it was a highlight of our trip.
we stayed in largo on the east side of DC. we had a really great 'soul food' meal at Carolina's kitchen in largo
town center shopping mall-- its next to the michael jordan movie theater.
check to see if your hotel has a shuttle service to the nearest metro station. that's cheaper & easier than parking there or not finding parking. follow traffic rules!!! we got ticketed and towed. carry identification and driver's lisc. at all times.

diggerb

I went before 911 and the Metro is the way to go if you can figure it out.We did not and got off at the Arlington cemetary and walked most of the way.We walked across the River bridge all the way to the mall.Washington monument looked close but it was a heck of a walk.The Houlacaust museum was OK but the Smithsonian museums were to busy people just stop and no one moves while they read and gauck at every little thing.We seen what we wanted to see in 2 days most of that time just walking.