Washington 2006: Part 1, getting there

I have survived the trip to DC with my family and returned to give you details. I will publish several posts in order to keep them from getting too long.

We left Friday morning for our Super 8 hotel room in York, PA (which incidentally is the self-styled "Factory Tour Capital of the World"). Not being particularly interested in factory tours, we checked in and then went to the local mall to pick up 4 walkie-talkies so that we could all keep in touch in DC and at the show and had a great dinner at an Olive Garden.

For Saturday we arranged a 5:45 wake-up call, went to have breakfast at the York Central Market which is open very early, and set off down 83 south to Greenbelt Station in Maryland. Greenbelt turned out to be a huge commuter station, bigger than I had expected. From there, we fought with the very confusing ticket machines and managed to coax from them 4 tickets that would cover our fare to and from the Convention Center. The Metro subways run every 10-20 minutes, so we didn't have long to wait for the train. The trains were quick and clean and the trip took 23 minutes.

The Convention Center was MUCH larger than I expected and very impressive. There are some very interesting sculptures on display there.