Okay, so I kinda-sorta got to do some touristy stuff this evening, but it was really lame in most senses. Not lame in that it wasn't a bad time, but lame in that the effort largely flopped.
Class ended at 6pm, and it was almost seven by the time we (co-workers and I) got out of here. One thing we've observed while here is the fact the traffic is atrocious at ALL hours of the day. Bearing that in mind, we scoped out a subway station about four miles from our hotel and we did the park and ride thing. It was about a thirty minute train ride to the National Mall area. We had this silly idea that we would go to the gift shop at the National Archives (a la National Treasure). We had checked the National Archives website, which stated operational hours through 9pm on Thursdays, but we didn't look at the fine print. It was the research library portion of the Archives that was open until nine, NOT the visitor's portion. Ugh.
As it turns out, pretty much EVERYthing in downtown D.C. closes by 6pm, so we missed it all. I was very surprised by this, as I would have thought this presumptively lively town would be bustling at all hours. Oh well. We did walk around and saw such sights as the Capitol, the Smithsonian, the Washington Monument, and countless federal buildings. But it was REALLY cold, so we hopped back on the subway and headed back to Virginia. I would like to have seen more, but in addition to the chill, we hadn't had dinner yet (and didn't until about nine thirty).
Unfortunately, this little foray into the heart of our nation will likely be my last for a few years. My flight out of here is 7am Saturday morning, so I'll definitely not have the opportunity then, and the timing will make it important to get back to the hotel room at a decent hour so I can pack and get some sleep.
The plan is to bring the girls out here to our nation's capitol in three years and do just about everything there is to do (including catching a Washington Nationals game if that deal doesn't fall through). Valuable lessons learned this night include just how good an idea it is to use the subway (it's cheap, convenient, and not terribly difficult... and driving would waste SOOOOO much time), and the concrete understanding of the scale of Washington. Looking at maps things seem so much closer. And while the cool stuff is not all that far apart, I now understand just how much walking will have to be done by the girls and I when we come back this way, which will help me better prepare.
When I took the girls to New York this past summer, I made several tactical errors that could have been strategically resolved had I made a solo advanced trip to NYC in the way that I'm now in DC ahead of a future vacation here.
One more surprise on this trip... the sheer lack of gift shops. Last night we went to the local mall, which it turns out is the biggest in the NCR (200+ shops), and there wasn't a single gift shop with capitol gifts. Same thing for the downtown venture tonight... no gift shops. Looks like I'm going to have to utilize the hotel gift shop and its outrageous prices.
No comments:
Post a Comment