Washington DC area

We visited Washington D.C last week, and I cannot even put to words how amazing our trip was! To say the area was nothing like I had imagined is an understatement. It is one of the few areas we just never got around to visiting, and yes I used to live in Connecticut and I should have made time. We live in the Seattle area currently, and we are always stuck in a traffic jam, no matter what time of day we try to go out. It is always noisy and smoggy even in the location we live which is 30 miles away from the big downtown area. In the DC area we stayed in Gaithersburg, about 20 miles away from the National Mall.