Planning go to Washington dc for 5 days. Car rental is recommended? Or public transportation is better?

Which airport are you flying into? And what do you plan to see and do?

You won't need a car in Washington, DC itself; public transportation is excellent.

Lee Ann

Public transportation. Parking is a nightmare.

Public transportation is excellent in DC and surrounding areas. Dealing with a car will be like traveling with an elephant.

Agree with all--no car!

Also, there are many ground transportation options, including public transportation, from each of the area airports, DCA (Reagan National), IAD (Dulles International Airport) and BWI (Baltimore Washington International Airport) to D.C.

DCA: http://www.metwashairports.com/reagan/1179.htm

IAD: http://www.metwashairports.com/dulle...transportation

BWI: http://www.bwiairport.com/en/travel/...transportation

Yes, yes, yes - public transport. No car!

Here is a handy tool for finding hotels near Metro station entrances.

http://www.stationmasters.com/System...ystem_map.html

Click on the various station names and you'll get a street map of the area surrounding the Metro station. The hotels show as solid red squares. Good, convenient Metro station areas to look at (click on) are:
GALLERY PLACE-CHINATOWN
ARCHIVES-NAVY MEML
METRO CENTER
MCPHERSON SQ
FARRAGUT WEST
FARRAGUT NORTH
DUPONT CIRCLE

Also, clicking on the red squares for the hotels brings you to a site run by hotels.com You can book directly from there.

This generally gives you a very good rate for each of the hotels and is good for seeing how expensive the hotels are relative to one another.

In DC a car is a nonsense. Feet or Metro. Rent a car only if you will be going into VA for a couple of days.

I have also found that the websites of most popular places will give the closest Metro station. I have found the DC Metro system one of the easiest to navigate~and I am the geographically-challenged type who can get lost even with the aid of a GPS!

thanks to all. i got the message...NO CAR!!!!