A friend of mine has set up a blog on Washington, DC, tourism. He is a fellow tour guide and his writing style is hilarious. He tells it like it is.

Here is the link:

http://www.dclikealocal.com/

My wife and I will be visiting Washington the first of May and are considering going to Gettysburg to spend a day. Would you recommend one of the tour buses or renting a car and doing it on our own?

Cute blog. I have been to the kite festival, but not any of the other festivities connected to the Cherry Blossom Festival. I will have to check them out this year.

I would rent a car and go to Gettysburg on my own if I were doing it.

Hey DRamsey, I echo vjpblovesitaly in opting to rent a car to tour Gettysburg. How long are you going to be in DC?

You might consider starting a separate thread to get more answers to this and other questions. Most people who regularly post here are independent and not tour group travelers so I'm guessing you'll get a majority who will tell you to rent a car and go for it.

Lauren, Thanks for posting the blog. Kind of Bill Bryson-esque.

Rent a car to go to Gettysburg. I do not believe there is much in organized day tours on buses to Gettysburg from DC. The problem is that most people have limited time and, if convenient will do Gettysburg before or afterwards. Gettysburg is a little over an hour from DC. It's a very easy drive and you will be going agains the rush hour both ways.

I may end up helping Tim with his blog. Nice sense of humor, no? I was laughing a lot. We trained together as tour guides and I could sort of hear his wry sense of humor as I read his blog.

If the blog starts getting a lot of hits and questions, I may end up helping Tim with it. I liked the comment that said it was "Bill Byron-esque". I will tell Tim that. We tour guides can get very sarcastic about all of this. Everyone asks the same questions and takes the same photos (because good tour guides stop at all the same good photo points).

The most frequently asked question is always, "Where are the toilets?" They will ask you that on the tour bus 5 minutes after boarding and/or immediately leaving the hotel. LOL. Many people are not aware that there are plenty of toilets at DC's monuments. Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, and WW II Memorial all have very nice toilets for the visitors; of course there are plenty inside at the museums and the new Capitol Visitors Center. I must admit when I travel elsewhere, I always want to know where they are. I am no different than my tour clients. I do make a joke about it when I respond. Sometimes, when I start a tour of DC's monuments and someone asks before I tell them, I say, "The National Mall would be quite a mess if there were insufficient toilets." As a tour guide, you point them out at each location because, if you don't--LOL--someone will have an "emergency". The ones at the WW II Memorial are, in my opinion, the best toilets on The Mall.

The large interstate motor coaches all have toilets on board, but sometimes I work for local companies who just schlep the groups around for the day. Those buses often do not have toilets on board.

You guys traveling to DC really should look at this guy's blog. He has a nice sense of humor too.