Discover Alexandria, Virginia—just minutes from Washington, D.C.—where colonial history, cobblestone streets, boutique shops, and foodie gems offer travelers a calmer, richer alternative to the nation’s capital.
Washington D.C. can be a tough town to visit as a tourist. We’ve become so polarized that our perception of the city is often filtered through the lens of how we feel about the government of the day, but aside from that, D.C. still holds allure.
When I visited last fall, I stayed at the lovely, infamous Watergate Hotel enjoying river views and a short walk to attractions, like the new museum The People’s House, which follows the story of The White House just blocks from the actual White House. Stepping into Washington’s fascinating past, it was a moment to escape our modern-era turmoil.
This summer, however, Washington was in the news again, after the President ordered National Guard troops into the city, ostensibly to address crime. Washington’s city leaders pointed out that crime was dropping, and the city’s police force was better equipped to address policing than a reserve army, but the troops have remained in D.C., primarily in highly visible tourist areas, to the detriment of tourism.
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This year, when I visited, I sidestepped Washington into Northern Virginia. Alexandria, just a few miles from the District (it was actually part of the District from 1790 to 1846) is in some ways like a time capsule of the region’s history, with surviving colonial-era buildings and cobblestone streets.
Instead of the tourist crush on the Mall and the timed entry to many of the museums, the city is more like a quiet residential neighborhood. I walked the uneven brick sidewalks and poked through several adorable shops like Red Barn Mercantile, which has a variety of gifts and housewares, a good mix of products where the shoppers are split between visitors and residents, says owner Amy Rutherford, who also notes that visitor numbers have remained pretty steady this year.
For visitors still wanting a taste of D.C., many regional institutions are set up in town too, like Call Your Mother, a self-proclaimed “Jew-ish” Deli selling bagels and other breakfast items, including coffee from beans roasted right at the Alexandria location.
History buffs will certainly get their satisfaction here, too. Alexandria was historically a sort of distribution center for trafficking enslaved people, says John Taylor Chapman, city council member, whose tour company offers Black history tours of Old Town. Northern Virginia was an area of small farms in the early 19th century, he recounted, and many of the farms could just barely afford to acquire a handful of enslaved workers. When they needed to raise money, they would take them to the market—today the Freedom House Museum—where they would be trafficked south and re-sold at a profit.
Alexandria Colonial Tours also offers a tour of Old Town, focusing on historical figures like George Washington and Robert E. Lee, who both have ties to the city. Quite close to Washington’s estate at Mount Vernon, Martha Washington used to send prescription orders to what is now the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum, and we also peer into the windows and ice cellar at Gadsby’s Tavern, where Thomas Jefferson paid $5 a night (a week’s wages for a working person at the time) to stay in high style, and where he was the night he found out he’d won election as the country’s third president.
On a drizzly Sunday morning, I took the bus up to the Del Ray neighborhood, yet another cute high street lined with shops and eateries (yes, the real estate pricing in Alexandria is off the charts) and ducked into Cheesetique for a cheese platter (oh, the heaven of a spring gouda from the first milk of the season) and some lobster mac and cheese. The local bus is free in Alexandria but the routes aren’t particularly sensical, but the D.C. buses also run here and they’re $2.25.
While I sat on a pontoon over the Potomac at Barca Pier & Wine Bar, nibbling on a plate of tapas (hello pan con tomate y jamon serrano!), I reflected on how the city, while calm at the moment, has also had its bouts of “extraordinary times” in the past. Had I visited during the War of 1812, for example, I might have been enlisted into loading provisions onto British warships after they sailed up the river, and not only demanded sugar and tea and rum from the city at gunpoint, but also made the residents pack it up and row it out to them. During the Civil War, Alexandria was the first city captured by Union troops (all they had to do was cross the river).
It got me thinking that maybe the National Guard putting out mulch around the District is perhaps not as extraordinary as we make it, but in the end it gave me an excuse to explore slightly outside my normal rounds (and eat more cheese than was probably necessary).
