Family travel tours are a great vacation, but make sure you include something special for the kids.

When you’re taking your kids on Washington D.C. tours, you have to remember that sometimes they’re just not into the same things we are. Respectful contemplation at a war memorial may mean a lot to us – but kids also need a little fun. There are plenty of things for kids to see and do on Washington D.C. tours. Here are a few of the lesser known and most exciting kid-friendly sites and activities.

•    Deep in the basement of the Department of Commerce Building, just a block from the Washington Monument, is the National Aquarium. This aquarium has everything a kid could want – alligators, sharks, frogs, toads, seahorses and eels. Cool.

•    Older kids can play spy at the International Spy Museum. They’ll be deployed on a top secret interactive mission and learn the secrets of disguise when former CIA Chiefs of Disguise Tony and Jonna Mendez demonstrate the art of the ‘quick change.’
 

•    For boys, who always like bugs, check out the O. Orkin Insect Zoo at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. They’ll see about 65 different species of arachnids, centipedes, crustaceans, insects and millipedes and watch a tarantula being fed.
 

•    Discover the Luray Caverns. This amazing wonderland of huge underground structures started forming 4 million centuries ago. And it’s still changing.
 
Image of Luray Caverns:

•    Board a pirate ship with the Pirate Adventure Cruise in Annapolis. The kids will be dressed up as pirates, learn to read a map that leads to hidden treasure (which they always find), and go into battle with water cannons.
 

•    Solve a mystery at Gunston Hall’s Plantation Sleuth. Tour the home, schoolhouse, kitchen, farmyard and gardens looking for clues – and win an 18th century prize!
 

•    Take a short drive to Virginia’s Dinosaurland and walk through the forest dotted with dozens of creatures like King Kong (kids can sit in his hand), huge Mammoths and Triceratops.
 

•    Go on safari at Virginia Safari Park and climb high up the Giraffe Feeding Station so you can feed giraffes on their level. You can also feed elk and bison from your feeding bucket, and drive through Tiger Territory.
 

•    Grab a tool kit at the Building Zone in the National Building Museum and build a 7-foot-tall, soft-block arch in the Great Hall (any budding architects or builders out there?) Or don hard hats and tool belts and drive a ‘dozer.
 

Sound like fun? You bet. And, let’s admit it, this kind of travel tour is just as appealing to us as it will be to our kids.
 

Don’t forget to include at least a few of these wonderful highlights in your Washington D.C. travel tours. You’ll not only enjoy them as much as your kids do, you’ll probably even feel like a kid again!!