Just a follow up from my other thread, just thought I'd ask you guys for some advice. I am mainly there to check out the museums (smithsonian, national potrait gallery, etc) and was thinking of getting a hotel around there. If it's not possible, which area would you guys recommend that would be safe and easily accessible? D.C. is one of the few places I'm visiting where I know only 1 person personally.

On the same note, if anyone is unemployed or bored, please feel free to contact me via pm if you would like to keep me company throughout the day..well if you want to go to museums and galleries :)

Oh, I was thinking of staying for 2 nights, possibly the 13th and 14th of June. :)

http://www.tripadvisor.com/...t_of_Columbia-Hotels.html

Also possibly the night of the 9-11th of June instead of 13-14th. Would people be ok for a meet on monday or tuesday night (or sunday night if you don't mind me fresh off a bus) ? I know it isn't ideal :(

haha maybe!

an afternoon of museums and galleries does sound quite nice, too bad i don't live in warshington :(

OMG THERE IS MORE THAN ONE GALLERI?!

this i can not speak to, trife. hm, was it sov that could perhaps shed more light on this?

Just go stay in the White House.... :P

tisya you can come hang out with me if you come up north more. but you cant sleep over cause my race car bed isnt big enough for both of us.

As long as your hotel is near a metro station, you'll be fine for transportation. Don't mess with PG county, or even Northeast DC. Stay in Northwest DC, Montgomery county, or even in Virginia.

Make sure you visit the National Cathedral while you are there.

And if you're in DC on a Sunday afternoon, make sure you visit Meridian Hill Park sometime around 4pm to 9pm. There's an awesome drum circle there.

:D
Bang Bang!!
Don't forget to stop by and see my statue near the white house.

Thanks for the info Rockman. I am coming up from Virginia and sadly will only be arriving sunday evening at about 8.30pm. So it will have to be Monday and Tuesday there. Still up for a meetup? :)

I'll give you a quick primer and others could probably add more.

I think the Washington Court hotel has had some deals running with $125 a night rooms, so probably $150 after taxes. That's probably about the cheapest you will find in a decent area of the city. It's walkable to the Capitol (maybe 4 or 5 blocks) and from there you can walk down the Mall to all of the museums, monuments, etc. Otherwise, most of the hotels downtown run about $275-400 a night (JW, Hyatt properties, etc).

Most of the museums and monuments are located off of the Orange and Blue Lines on the Metro. So you can look at a number of hotels in VA without having to worry about transferring lines (it's not hard, but just making it a step easier).

In VA, I would suggest Crystal City. It's sort of immediately adjacent to National Airport and Metro-accessible. And if you're really adventurous, there is a way to walk into the city along the river (about 2.5 miles or so from there). Old Town Alexandria is very nice, but the hotels right there are fairly pricey and at their point you may as well have stayed in DC. I think there is a modestly priced hotel in Springfield near the Blue Line's end and there are a handful of hotels near the Huntington Metro Station (Yellow Line in VA), but they're about a mile downhill from the station. The rooms I've seen advertisements for there run from $69-125ish a night, it's not an unsafe area, just old places.

If you go the Montgomery County Route (Red Line) then your best bet is probably Bethesda. I don't recall hotels along the other station stops until Shady Grove and that's a bit of a hike from downtown. The other option here may be staying in Silver Spring, MD. It borders DC along it's very northern tip and is also on the Red Line (albeit the other side of it). There is a decently priced Comfort Inn about a half mile from the Metro. And I think there are two other hotels back there.

It's a long bike ride (solid 50 minutes or so from downtown DC), but if you rent a bike, you can also get down to Mt. Vernon, which is George Washington's home. There is a trail that runs all the way from DC to Mt. Vernon along the Potomac River and it's quite pleasant.

Let me know if you have any questions. Sometimes I wish I was unemployed, but unfortunately I will be working then.

Oh, and if you find yourself bored by the museums, the Zoo is also free and about a 5 minute ride on the Red Line from downtownish area of DC.

Whatever you do, stay out of Prince Georges County Maryland. There is nothing worthwhile to see there except crime, crime, crime, shootings, stabbings, and fires.

Seriously.

I'm so glad I left there to move back "home" to the Northeast.

If you got to Washington and have any interest in space and areonautics, I recommend the Smithsonian space museum near the airport: http://airandspace.si.edu/udvarhazy/

Has one of the surviving space shuttles and some other awesome stuff from space exploration and aviation.

Thanks trumper! Very useful info. :D I think that's the hotel I was looking at yesterday and USD150 a night for that location isn't too bad.

For my Virginia trip, that is more of a meeting someone in particular than a touristy thing but I will look at the hotels in Virginia by the border. I am just torn between prices and locations as I will be doing a lot more travelling than I realized so I won't be able to be as lazy as I want unless I cut a city off my itinerary XD

Thanks for the suggestion Erian. Will see if I can squeeze it in somewhere since I have 2 full days :)

If you have two full days then you should be pretty good. If you're taking that Chinatown bus that runs from DC to other cities for $25 bucks, then the Washington Court Hotel may make sense just by virtue of being able to walk there. Also, Metro isn't exactly cheap and will probably run you between $4-8 roundtrip a day. So if the savings to stay outside the city isn't more than $30-40, I would say it's not worth it.

My VA recommendations were based on visiting DC. All of those places are probably no more than 30 minutes from the Mall and most are quicker.

Two days should be a good amount of time to fit in the museums and monuments. Then again I don't know about lines. I see people lined up every morning to go into the Bureau of Printing and Engraving for their money-making tour, but I haven't done it since I was a kid and no idea if it's usually a line to get into. Otherwise, I would block off roughly 2 hours per museum, maybe less depending on your interest. If you want cheap food court type eat then do the Native American Indian Museum's food court.

Anyway, long as you don't mind walking, almost all of our museums and monuments are along the mall or almost adjacent to it. (Exceptions being the Zoo, the Air & Space's other museum out by Dulles Airport mentioned by Erian, Spy Museum is a few blocks off it and costs a few bucks). Oh, and don't waste your time at the aquarium--it blows and Baltimore's is the real one. But every other museum is pretty decent.

I found a place near the Zoo that's quite nice so I might book a room there for 3 nights. I think I'll have time to cover everything, just a shame I have no one to talk to about it at the time XD Damn you employed people! (presuming an unemployed person would actually want to hang around with me and chat of course)

Stay near DuPont Circle. Really close to the sites by metro, and a ton of restaurants for night time. Being closer to the sites/museums limits the quality of restaurants since those areas have lower quality dinner choices.

i volunteer blid for this meetup@!

Yes, Monday Night would work well for me.

Ok well it turns out i am not staying near the zoo but at a friend of the family's so i'll gave to figure out where it is. So..as of right now it's Rockman, trumper, red x if you guys are available? :)

Wahaha!!! Born and raised there for 18 years!!! Now I live in Tennessee and couldn't be happier!

welcome to my hood.

I'm hopeful to be able to sneak out for a little while Friday afternoon.

Not all the restaurants by the museums are bad, but yah, I would pick many of the places up in Dupont over them (Bistro du Coin, Bethesda Bagel for breakfast, etc).

The zoo is great and there's a nearby park path to hike if you are into that sort of thing. I was just there about 3 weeks ago. :)