Day 2 (pt 1) DC → NYC

We started the morning off in DC. Since we had about 30 min to kill before heading to Union Station and it was a lazy Sunday morning with virtually no traffic, we drove through downtown DC on a mini-tour. The boys were excited to catch glimpses of the Washington Monument, White House, Capitol, Supreme Court and the legions of Smithsonians and as Holden said, "all those white buildings made with all that granite." It was a nice detour to whet our appetites for our official DC stops later in the week.

We easily made it to the station and onto our train. Yesterday it took us 9 hours of driving and only went through 2 states. This train ride was less than 4 hours and we'll traipse through 5 states, all of them new ones for the boys.

My favorite moment was when the train started coming into view of the NYC skyline. The boys lit up when they spotted 1 World Trade Center & the Empire State Building and Holden's eyes bugged out a few minutes later when I explained to him that yes, we were in a tunnel and that tunnel was going under the river.Read more