Why Bike?
If you've been to Washington, DC, you will know that if you visit the Smithsonian Museums, you will be travelling a great distance between them. The buildings are like a mirage... they seem so close, but when you try to walk to them, or even find the entrance, that short distance stretches into infinity, especially when you have little children tagging along or you are walking in sweltering heat or extreme cold. I'm pretty certain that some tourists have died from exhaustion from the walk between buildings.
In researching the top things to do in DC, I came across "Bike the Sites" on Tripadvisor. While I'm sure the tour guides give a great talk, I actually dislike big group tours. I feel like a caged animal. I decided that I would get the bikes, and ditch the tour. This way, big overwhelming distances on foot would be avoided. We stayed at a hotel near Union Station, which is a good 1.5 km from the edge of the National Mall, the name of the big green space stretching from the Capitol Building in the east to Lincoln Memorial in the west boundary. Along this strip of green lie the many Museums of the Smithsonian. On average, it was around 2.5 km to each Museum from our hotel.
Where to get your Bike?
The best option is probably to use Capital Bikeshare, a bicycle sharing system with 1,200 bikes and 140 stations across the district. For a tourist visit, you can pay $15 for a three day membership or $25 for 30 days. The first 30 minutes are free. So, essentially all you pay is $15 for three days if you just need the bikes to get around. This is the end of the research I did because I could not use the system since my two young kids could not ride adult size bikes. I thought of buying bikes for the kids through Craigslist, though... used bicycles from Craigslist (kids' bicycles go for a song when they are used) and donate them or re-sell when I was done with them. I also thought of packing up our Chariot bicycle trailer to bring with us, but wasn't sure I could attach it to the shared bikes.
Instead, I found another option.
We rented two adult "comfort" bicycles from Bike and Roll, spanking new at the beginning of the tourist season, which begins in March. We also rented one children's bike and a trail-a-bike, which turns a regular bicycle into a tandem. It lacks a front wheel, and its steering handles don't steer, but the back passenger can pedal.
The rate is $45/day for each adult bike, and $35/day for a child's bike OR trail-a-bike. Wow, you might be saying to yourself: that's more than a car rental for a week! And you would be right. The rental does include helmets (mandatory for those under age 16), locks, and little handlebar bags. Now that I think about it, I think they forgot to give us the tire patch kit (bike tube, pump) that was promised. Well, thank goodness we didn't get a flat. The longer you rent, the less expensive the rental becomes. Day 3 and 4 of our rental was only an additional $24 for all four bicycles.
Being the Obsessive Researching Mommy, I would be remiss if I did not get a discount on my rental rate. I bought an Entertainment Book in March for the Washington, DC/Maryland area for $17.50 (delivery included) to get a 50% off rental fees to make it more palatable. As the year progresses the price of the Entertainment Book goes down, so you could pick one up as cheaply as $5-10 the closer you get to the expiry date of November. If you would like to use the rest of the coupons, make sure you give yourself a very long lead time for delivery, which is 10 business days. With the discount, I was able to rent all four bicycles for four full days for $144 plus taxes for a total of $152.50, or around $9.50 per bike per day.
How to Bike?
I'd been warned that cycling in DC meant a death wish with children. While it is illegal to ride on the sidewalk, we found that riding within the green space of the National Mall on the gravel paths and wide sidewalks was acceptable at a very low rate of speed. In the mornings, from 8-11 am, most of the sidewalks and pathways are virtually empty, save the occasional runner. The only time things got unmanageable was daily around 3-5 pm when the paths between monuments were choked with tourists. In these cases we would ride on the grass or worn bare soil paths adjacent to the sidewalks.
We also found ourselves riding down Pennsylvania Avenue once. The bike lanes run down the centre of the Avenue, but you are only separated from fast moving traffic by a white painted line.
To make it safer, we opted for the trail-a-bike over an individual bike for our youngest child. My husband and I are not spooked riding on the road in traffic, and perhaps that is why we did not find DC traffic to be frightening. That being said, I find that the drivers in DC were often on their cell phones and in a big hurry, meaning that they did not yield to pedestrians or cyclists and would frequently make dangerous turns across our path. For this reason, we would often walk our bicycles across intersections and wear bright clothing.
Where to Bike?
I had the idea that I wanted to cycle from Union Station to the Zoo, which is a 18 km total round trip, via the National Mall and the Rock Creek Trail, which is a paved separated path that runs from the Lincoln Memorial north to the Zoo. I wanted to tour all the monuments on another day. We did both of these things, and it was not dangerous. The Zoo is really quite close. The total ride time to the Zoo is about one hour at the pace of a jogger. That is, at a very slow rate, with some stops.
The path is nearly flat, but has a few very small hills near the Zoo. Much of the path parallels a busy parkway.
The path is narrow in some places, barely enough for two bicycles to pass each other in opposite directions, and we had to walk the bicycles a short distance when there was only a sidewalk and nothing separating us from traffic just south of the last bridge/tunnel before the zoo.
The kids will love riding beside the creek.
When you reach the Zoo, you enter directly from the Rock Creek Trail at the Zoo's south entrance, so you avoid the big hill at the other Zoo entrance. Lock your bikes north of the information booth/security station across from the concession. You may not ride your bikes within the Zoo, although you may want to!
The tour of the Monuments was entertaining. The worst part is negotiating the angled roads crossing from the Washington Monument to the Tidal Basin. There are no bike racks in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Memorial, or the Roosevelt Memorial. This was not a big problem as we did not stay very long at each memorial, so we did a sloppy job of locking up to nearby fences. In fact, bike racks were fairly sparse through most of downtown DC. The rack outside Air and Space was not even secured to the ground, and the centre spaces had bent bars. The bike rental agency assured us that none of the renters had ever reported a bicycle stolen... yet. If the bicycle is stolen, you are responsible for paying the whole replacement cost, unless you buy insurance through them. We said no to the insurance.
The kids had a great time and all my research was worth it. When we tried to return the bikes at the end of day 3, the kids begged to keep the bikes for another day, so we did.
