Why should you choose to experience DC with our guides?
- All our guides are licensed in DC who will give you a superior private tour experience. We want to provide the best experience to our guests and therefore we only work with licensed guides and have the highest standard for their knowledge, professionalism, and flexibility.
- We have a group of fun-loving guides who will make sure they provide you with the best experience possible and teach you history and entertain you throughout!
- Our guides have over 750 hours of guiding experience in the tour you select and at least two years of experience as a guide in Washington DC.
- Your guide will be dressed to impress you!
- Your guide knows Washington just as locals do. They are history buffs and great storytellers!
- Since it is your luxury private tour, we are okay if you are running a little late as per schedule because they are booked for an extra hour by us just in case there is any delay.
Our Guides
Canden
Canden Arciniega is a native North Carolinian bringing southern charm to Washington DC for the past decade. As manager of DC by Foot, she both coordinates and leads tours herself bringing together her degrees in History and Business.
Canden earned a BA in History with an Education concentration from Elon University and master’s in history from University College London. She also has certificates in Business Management and Teaching English as a Second Language, which has proved useful for working with international school groups.
She has taught at both the secondary level and preschool, in the United States, United Kingdom and South Korea. Having found education lacking the research aspect she loves, Canden moved to Washington DC to become a historian. In addition to leading tours, she has worked at the Washington DC Historical Society, had three books about Washington DC published by The History Press and Arcadia Publishing, and has appeared on numerous television shows for The Travel Channel and Discovery Channel.
Canden’s style of guiding focuses more on the stories. She believes guests are more likely to remember the crazy coincidence about Robert Todd Lincoln and presidential assassinations than just the dates that every memorial was dedicated (though she knows those, too). Canden’s speciality is Georgetown neighbourhood and its history, though she prides herself in being able to lead most of the tours we offer with extensive knowledge about Washington DC’s history.
Dan King
Dan King grew up minutes away from Antietam Battlefield and credits this, and several good history teachers, for his love of history. He knew early on that he wanted to teach and took that love of history to Dartmouth College where he earned a degree in history and moral philosophy. He then taught high school US History in Rome, GA before relocating to Washington DC in 2005.
While in DC, he taught for a civics education organization that used the city as a classroom for students from all over the country attending one-week seminars that culminated in meeting their representatives on Capitol Hill. He then started working in the Teachers Program, showing teachers across the country how to utilize the incredible resources of DC. In 2009, he went back to the classroom and taught history, civics, and journalism at a local private school.
Unfortunately, the continuing recession forced him from teaching, but luckily, he stumbled into guiding and discovered that his knack for story-telling, his booming “radio voice” (he ran a commercial rock radio station and DJed on the air through college) and his love of Washington, DC was a perfect combination for guiding. He is a lover of all things George Washington, and specializes in Revolutionary War history, Civil War history in and around the Capitol, and is a bit of an urban planning geek, especially as it relates to DC.
Outside of guiding, he is an avid BBQer (his 18-hour smoked brisket is legendary), a lover of the Washington Nationals, and occasionally makes terrible short films.
Becca
Rebecca Grawl is a passionate historian with a love of making history and civics come to life. She is a native Texan whose annual childhood treks to D.C. to visit family fostered a lifelong love affair with our nation’s capital and the stories within. After graduating from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (now Randolph College) with a degree in American Culture, she worked in museum education and development.
Working in the museum field helped her to develop different strategies for storytelling and sharing history with different audiences and groups and she still loves sharing D.C.’s wonderful museums with guests today. Rebecca serves on the board of the National Woman’s Party at the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument and enjoys mentoring the next generation of leaders as a member of the senior board of the National Society, Children of the American Revolution
As a tour guide, she has been able to take her love of bringing history to life outside the walls of a single building and onto the city streets. She often describes being a tour guide as a natural extension of her daily habit of starting conversations with “did you know?” Thanks to a strong liberal arts education, she considers herself an American history generalist, but she has a particular passion for the presidency and the men who have occupied it, assassinations (and attempts made!), civics and government, historical neighbourhoods like Georgetown and Alexandria, and Arlington National Cemetery, where her grandparents are laid to rest.
Our guides have years of experience and five-star reviews from guests on our website. They all have one common cause- to teach you history and facts about DC as well as make you feel like you are a local in this city!