JamesWhitcombRiley
Lead Service Attendant
My mistake. My memory must have been erased by the trauma of not finding that Washington Post the one time I went into the station during the switch. Thanks!
Washington Union and the peaceful park between it and the Senate building are well worth taking a longer layover than just glancing in perilously during the locomotive switch. That's the way to do it. Going down the steep hill to the National Mall is more of a hike, though. And the circulator bus has finally been definitely cancelled. I could never find it. (Seems to be a theme. But I did find the stops, just no bus.) The Metro is great of course, but it's indoors. Museums are free in DC, mostly.
Many neighborhoods, just off the main corridors like H Street, with its streetcar more or less at the station, are quite wonderful to walk in. If you like that sort of thing. Also on the Union Station side of town are Eastern Market and the fine fountain outside the Library of Congress. Poseidon and nymphs. The new version of The Wharf south of Maine Street is not to my liking (very big), but the old dockside boats selling seafood are still in their corner. (They don't sail.) In an odd coincidence, the RPA called me when I was down there, the only time they ever have.
I'd read the H Street Streetcar was perhaps a bad project. The corridor was just becoming hipster, but on the other hand, it runs in one of just two lanes, and the express commuter bus is heavily used and much more important for people in Southeast DC and Maryland. Sure enough on one trip an empty police car was blocking the lane for no apparent reason. In DC you sort of go with the flow, or stop with it in this case. Of course the driver let us off, those of us who wanted to get places. Things get more and more hurried in the cities from Baltimore north, in my experience, though most Northeast cities are charmingly pleasant to walk around in, when you have time. One exception to the peaceful easy feeling of Washington are the very stressed out staffers you see around Capitol Hill and from the train windows going north of Alexandria, as they run on the pedestrian ways. A law degree, low pay and ambition!
