East coast transport

I didn't get to see too much of Washington, DC's sights during my attendance at a librarians' meeting there last week. [we librarians work pretty hard, in case you hadn't noticed] But I got to see more of the countryside by flying into Baltimore instead of direct to DC, and saved some money in the process.

Now, I've already extolled the virtues of DC's metro in a post on my London blog (since riding a subway will always remind me of the Tube). But that wasn't the only mode of mass transit I got to sample on my trip.

To start with, of course, I flew from wedding central in Denver to Baltimore. Then took a WMATA bus, which conveniently picked me up at BWI, and for a little over $3, deposited me at the Greenbelt Metro station pictured above. After a nice little drive through the Maryland countryside, where fall colors were still quite lovely. I got right on a metro train headed to downtown DC and after a short wait was on my way. One connection later, and I was at Pentagon City, a short but invigorating walk from my hotel.

This isn't my hotel, but rather the impressive buildings at the Pentagon City Mall

All together, my plane touched down at 3:30 and I was in my room relaxing at 5:30. Not too bad if it's a Sunday afternoon and you're not in a hurry. Total cost of ground transport: $6, and the flight from Denver was less than $150.

As I said, I was too busy meeting, cogitating, learning about cool new things to put on my website, and visiting with librarian friends from around the country, to see many DC sights during the meeting. However, a nice vendor-provided lunch did offer this view of some of the monuments across the river from the meeting site in Arlington, VA:

I was able to take a quick walk in a little park across from a restaurant where a group of Texas librarians got together for lunch. It had this really nifty fountain, along with some interesting bamboo structures that unfortunately didn't photograph very well.

Back to the transport theme, however, I took a different route back to Baltimore on Wednesday when the conference was over. Being a weekday, the wonderful Maryland MARC trains were running, which is a somewhat faster way of getting from DC to BWI, for about the same price as the bus/metro combo.

This option centers on Union Station, the lovely structure featured in last Wednesday's post. Once you're there, I'll bet you could get just about anywhere else. But I just needed to get up the road to Baltimore. Which you can do on the Penn Line in about 1/2 hour, for $6. When you get to the BWI stop, just hop off the train and onto the handy free shuttle bus that takes you directly to your airport terminal.

From which I was able to get back to San Antonio for less than $100! So unless time is really short, fly into Baltimore instead of DC National or Dulles—save money and get to ride trains in the bargain!