Washington Monument Lodge — Local services in Washington

-1 Stars. How has no one left a review on the restrooms within the lodge? I used the women's restroom directly in front of the Washington Monument (Washington Monument Lodge) and the state of the restroom was absolutely appalling. It is by far the worst restroom I have ever seen. Of the 4 stalls inside, only one had a working door, two stalls had no doors whatsoever, and the first stall technically had a door but it does not close and the metal wall is falling down from the stall. Women and children were forced to use stalls with no doors during a busy time of day as there are no other restrooms nearby. I would have taken a picture of how bad the restroom looked for this review, but could not due to the lack of doors. Americans and foreigners alike were there to witness the U.S. National Mall, and were faced with these abysmal facilities, not two blocks from the white house. I felt ashamed of this city's inability to provide the most basic of amenities...

A cute little standalone building with a gift shop. But more importantly they hand out Washington Monument tour tickets here in the morning. I came here last Saturday (good weather, near the end of cherry blossom season) to line up for same day tickets. Got in line at approximately 8 AM, and was the 35th person or so in line. At about 8:45 the park rangers began operations and the line moved very quickly. They said that apparently they had about 200 timed tickets to distribute and each party is limited to 6. I ended up getting the last 2 tickets for 2PM. If you're okay with waking up early, it's not that bad of a wait, since you get a fantastic view of the monument in the morning when very few people are around. We took some pictures of the monument with no tourists in the frame which...

Didn't know about tickets to the top of the monument until our trip. A limited number of same day tickets are available in person. Window opens at 8:45 am, arrived around 8 am with approximately 10 people in line. This experience was a friday morning, second week of march. Was super excited for an opportunity to see the top, unfortunately the monument ended up being closed for tours due to maintenance. It is closed once a month for scheduled maintenance, waited in line the day after cleaning. Apparently the cleaning/maintenance was not fully complete and tours were canceled the following day. Check the recreation.org website AND the nps website to ensure this situation doesn't happen to you. The nps site wasn't updated with...