Of course I couldn’t go all the way to Washington DC and only see the pandas – today I am sharing my city guide and what we got up to on our trip in September 2018. It was very hot on our first day, however that day then ended with a crazy rainstorm and we got very soaked! After that it was a bit of a damp and cloudy trip, however that didn’t spoil our time, just made for some dullness in the pictures but hopefully they still show the city and its attractions well.
Following on from my post about seeing the pandas at Smithsonian National Zoo back in September 2018 I wanted to put together a post about everything else we saw on our two visits to the National Zoo. It’s a huge zoo and they have so many species to see and learn about, we really had a great time and really filled out two visits well with everything the zoo had to show! They have such a range of species from all of the large mammal favourites to many different reptile species in the specific Reptile House. This post covers all the areas at the zoo, but we didn’t quite see everything/get a picture of everything. The zoo is split into 3 main areas which are colour coded on the map, I thought this was quite useful and split the species quite nicely in the zoo, and so I’ve used the same areas to share about what we saw in this wonderful zoo.
When I started taking trips to visit pandas, going to the US never really crossed my mind as an option – and I was quite happy because we have plenty of pandas to see here in Europe. But back in 2018 I was planning out where I could go in the Autumn and somehow Washington DC ended up on the list – there was the option for a direct flight from Edinburgh, and it only took around 7 hours, and I was going to get a pretty good deal with my Expedia points, so I persuaded my mum to join me on my first trip to see American pandas! Also having seen Tai Shan and Bao Bao the previous year in Dujiangyan, I was quite looking forward to the prospect of seeing little brother Bei Bei while he was still living in Washington DC with his parents.
