Originally Posted by isabel (Post 17297528)

We booked a reservation at the Holiday Inn College Park. It gets quite good reviews on booking.com and has free parking. I don't care that College Park is an unattractive town as we are literally just sleeping there the one night. Probably will even have dinner before we get there and will head out by 7:30 in the morning. But if anyone has any info about that hotel being unsafe or unclean I'd appreciate that info. We cancel the reservation till the day before.

Other than distance is there anything wrong with parking at Union Station? We want to see the capitol building and the supreme court building and a few of the museums along the mall. That looks to be about 2 miles (each way) from Union Station. Including Washington Monument it would be about 3 miles. That's walking distance for us. But I will look into the others mentioned as well. (Originally was looking at Ohio Drive but decided that was too far).

Thanks for the info on I-66 - There will be two of us so according to what I could find by googling it, we will be OK in HOV2 lanes anytime. I assume it is easy enough to avoid HOV3 lanes if we pay attention. Anything else I need to know? I just googled Union Station to Front Royal - this is about the time of day we will likely be driving it - and even with a considerable amount of "red" it still says only 1 1/2 hours. Sound right? I checked with Massachusetts Easy Pass and it says it can be used in Virginia so hopefully we are good with any tolls we hit.

Originally Posted by Vttraveler (Post 17298606)

Sf7307-- when say there were only 25 to 30 other people at the National gallery, were you talking a out a spcifi .exhibit or a section of the museum?
we will ne visit our son in MD and would like to get in to see the Dutch/flemish exhibit if it's really not crowded. I suppose we could always try and leave if we are not comfortable.