The plan for today was to head out on the local subway system to Union Station in Washington DC. There was no great rush as we really didn’t want to be caught up in the rush hour commute, so we got up at our usual time and had an unusually good free breakfast at the hotel.
The hotel provides a free shuttle service to and from the metro station so we jumped on that and headed out for the day. First obstacle was buying a ticket from the self-serve machine, I am sure the ones in Korea were much easier to use, and we don’t speak a word of the language! Finally got the tickets and up onto the train for a 35 minute trip.
At Union station we picked up our trolley tour, there were a number of tours designated by colour, we had picked the green tour, but as it turns out we had to take the orange tour to connect with ours; two tours for the price of one! We were about an hour into the tour when thunder and lightning struck (not literally, but loud enough to drown out the PA system on the trolley). This was followed shortly after by torrential rain. We decided the best plan was to stay with the trolley rather than head off sightseeing on our own.
The tour was pretty good and we got to see most of DC, we didn’t get to see any museums, which to be honest didn’t bother us too much, but I am sure some people would be devastated if they were in the same boat (pun partially intended).
By mid afternoon we had done what we had wanted to do, and the weather still wasn’t behaving so we put plan B into action.
It just so happens that a famous quilter has a studio not too, about 20 miles, far from our hotel, and we planning on going there tomorrow before heading south. We decided we had time to get back to the hotel and head out to the studio, which would give us a shorter day tomorrow as the place doesn’t open until 10AM and then we would have a 500 mile drive after that.
The 20 mile drive took about 35 minutes, and according to Lyn the drive was well worth it, she didn’t leave the studio empty handed, that much I do know. The drive back took just about 1 hour 10 minutes… welcome to DC rush hour.
I was surprised at how much woodland and open space there is in and around DC, in fact some of the roads we to to and from the studio were more like (large) windy English country lanes.
All in all a very good, albeit short visit to Washington.