Up and Down and All Around in Washington D.C.

Sunday, March 8 – Tuesday, March 10

Whenever I have tried to study a city map to figure out where I want to go, I am frustrated by all the brightly colored lines covering up road numbers and names. In the last couple of days I've figured out just how helpful those lines can be.

On Sunday we were approached by a guy selling “hop on – hop off” tours. We declined at the time because we really had wanted to just stroll around. But by evening we decided that it might be a bit much to walk to Arlington, the capitol and all the monuments. We asked the guy at the hotel desk if he recommended the tours and he felt they were really overpriced for what you get. He suggested instead, that we just use the Metro. I told him that we were really just two country girls and hadn't a clue how to go about it. He walked us outside and showed us that the nearest station was just a half block away.

Monday morning we mapped out a tentative plan over breakfast and walked over to the Metro to give it a try. To make it less complicated, we each just bought an all day pass for $14.95. That would allow us to get lost as many times as we wanted without ever having to pay more to find our way back. And then down we went to the trains.

Once we figured out the system, we used the Metro to go everywhere. We still did a lot of walking though! On Sunday, we took it to Arlington National Cemetery (read about it on Alyssa's blog “Day 2 in DC”)and there walked around for several miles. Leaving there, we walked across the Memorial Bridge to the Lincoln Memorial and all the monuments. We figure by the time we were finished, we had walked 8-10 miles!

Alyssa became especially adept at reading the map and figuring out our stops. That was really helpful to me as I didn't have to dig out my reading glasses. On Sunday evening, after visiting all the monuments, we took the metro out to Union Station for supper. The food court was just closing so we ended up eating at Johnny Rockets. There we made plans to go to see the Capitol building in the dark. Coming up from the subway at that point required a very long escalator.

Many of the routes required us changing lines a time or two. Again, Alyssa would map them out and I would help watch for station signs. It got pretty complicated at times because we had to use our ticket to get through the correct gate to get on the right platform. Sometimes there were few people getting off and on but we also rode the Metro during both morning and evening rush hour. Pretty crazy. Sometimes I'd hold onto the handle of Alyssa's backpack to make sure we stayed together. It didn't take long to see that it was sometimes the survival of the fittest.

All in all, I think we did quite well. We gained knowledge, experience and confidence. Alyssa was a real trooper, keeping her head through it all. Once, we had just got off a red line and needed to change to orange, blue or silver. Any train of those colors that was headed in the right direction would get us where we needed to go. We hadn't had time to read the signs when a train flew into the station. Alyssa urged us to just get on and chance that it was the right one. It did turn out to be but we knew that if it was wrong, we could figure out how to get back on track.

Now, as our train moves slowly toward Boston on tracks bordered by snowbanks, we look forward to figuring out that transportation system. New places to visit and new ways to get there. And always, there are streets and people.