We departed from Reading at around 7am. There were three of us on this trip. My subordinate and an internal consultant from UK.
I was the designated driver because my subordinate is too short to reach the accelerator pedal of that huge American car, and the UK lady dared not to drive in the US due to the different side of driving. That left only me, the tall and brave one, to take on this difficult task.
My subordinate was the navigator. She had done her research and printed out the directions from the Web. I had downloaded a GPS software onto my mobile phone the night before using the free Internet access in the hotel, but only turned out to be useless. Nonetheless, i pre-set the driving routes on Google maps onto my mobile phone as a backup to her printed map.
The plan was to drive to a suburb outside of Washington DC instead of drive into the downtown area where parking will be expensive. We would first go to Tysons Corner in Virginia state, where our hotel, Courtyard Marriott was located. It was about 11 miles (or 18km) from downtown Washington DC. We would park our car there and then take the metrorail into Washington DC. The hotel provides free shuttle bus to and fro the metro station, and there is a huge mall nearby the hotel as well.
The distance between Reading and Tysons Corner is about 153 miles, or approximately 246km. The estimated driving time based on Google map is 2 hrs 45 min.
The journey wasn't really as smooth as we had hoped it would be. We took a few wrong turns on the highway and gotta turn back by taking the subsequent exits. When we had reached Tysons Corner, we also got lost looking for the exact location of the hotel.
Finally, we arrived at the hotel at around 11pm (and that was driving non-stop, without even breaking for washroom). Uh huh, it took us about 1 hour more to reach the destination. In total, we got lost about 5 times during the journey, and that contributed to the time lost.
We checked in to the hotel with two rooms. My subordinate and i were sharing one (in a king size bed) and the UK lady took a room for herself. We had wanted to have our lunch at the hotel, but then the cafe only serves breakfast. We asked the front desk for direction to a nearby restaurant, and was informed that the shuttle bus to the metro station would be arriving in 10 minutes. So we decided to bear with the hunger and wait till we got into Washington DC.
There is quite a distance from the hotel to the nearest metro station, Dunn Loring-Merrifield. It was about 15 minutes drive away. We told the driver that we wanted to visit the museums and he told us to alight at the Metro Center station.
At the metro station, we were puzzled at how to operate the ticketing machine. We approached the counter in the station and thought we could get the farecards from there (like in SG). We were wrong; they do not sell farecards at counter and we gotta get it from the machine. The lady at the station was very rude even though we were tourists. She didn't even bother to move an inch and just shouted through the window of the booth. We struggled to figure out how to operate the machine (as there weren't any clear instructions anywhere) and yet she couldn't care less and just sat there watching, without even offering to help. Well, i guess that's a true American for you.
Anyway, our three brains managed to figure out how the machine worked and got ourselves a farecard each.
Don't ask me why panda on their farecard, as i had the exact same unanswered question. The numbers printed on the card mean the remaining balance in the card. Everytime we passed through the exit gate, a new number will be printed. We can use the same card to top up fare.
The train journey took us about 30 minutes. The first thing we did after stepping out of the Metro Center station was to look for food! We went into the first restaurant that we saw, and it was COSI, a restaurant chain selling sandwiches and salads.
I ordered the special on the menu, Shrimp Remoulade Sandwich and a cup of coffee, which i definitely needed after the long drive since early morning.
The sandwich was yummy! There were big whole shrimps in its signature freshly baked flatbread... simply delicious!
We bonded with the UK lady during lunch by telling each other a bit about ourselves. I disclosed that i was married and now separated, but didn't mention any other details of course.
It was almost 2pm already when we finished lunch. It was time to explore Washington DC.
Labels: travel
