Can anyone recommend a hotel or motel adjacent to VRE, the Washington Metro or MARC?
The ideal hotel/motel candidate will: (1) be walking distance to any such station that has weekend service; (2) offer free parking; and (3) have room rates that are not expensive, any more than is necessary.
Once we’re on the RT/Commuter Rail system, we can make out pretty well. Part of this is for the fun of riding new (to me) kinds of transit, and part is to “commute” to D.C. sights (I’ve been there several times but not lately).
We tried this approach in Newark this past October and it worked fine.
I don’t have the “ideal” hotel for you, but based on personal experience I can let you know about a “good” location you might consider.
I had a business meeting outside of DC and took my family so that we could spend a day at the Smithsonian.
We stayed at the Comfort Inn and Suites in College Park, MD (9020 Baltimore Ave.,College Park, MD 20740). Being a university town, there were good rates (much better than staying in DC). They offer a free shuttle bus ride (10 minutes) to the Green Line of Metro which also has a MARC stop (parallel trackage at College Park stop). From here, you could take MARC to Union Station, or the Green Line Metro to Chinatown and transfer to the Red line to Union Station (to access Amtrak, VRE, MARC)
Anyway, the hotel was spotless, the staff was friendly and accomodating, the shuttle was easy and the rates/availability made it attractive over staying any closer to DC.
I’m sure you could find deals downtown with the sluggish economy, and I’m sure others will have more railfan friendly suggestions (remember I picked this property to be near my client’s office, not to railfan.)
Not just good, but a very good choice! IMHO Comfort Inns give good value for the money and I like their free breakfasts too. This is the sort of thing I had in mind. In Newark, we had the use of a free shuttle or, if we were in a hurry, it was no more than a five-minute ride from the Robert Treat Hotel to Penn Station/Newark and less to the other station.
You could try Rockville, MD, although we have not stayed there in many years. Rockville is a MARC and Amtrak (Capitol Ltd.) stop, and there is a Metro Red Line station there too.
The Red Roof Inn is a mile away; there are other places nearby too (such as Courtyard).
If you don’t want to stay “in” DC, theres a couple options that will put you in shooting distance from the monuments on the metro. Option one would be to stay somewhere along the red line in Maryland such as Rockville, Bethesda, Chevy Chase. Option two would be to stay in Arlington. You could stay on the orange line. Look for hotels in Roslyn, “Courthouse”, “Clarendon”. There is a Hilton Garden Inn in Courthouse that was near where I used to live and there are some other hotels in that area. Another option would be to stay in Crystal City. Crystal city/Pentagon city is south of the area I previously mentioned and closer to Regan airport. There are a lot of hotels in the area and its on the blue/yellow metro line.
Any of these metro lines puts you in shooting distance from a lot of the DC sites. Arlington is technically “closer” to a lot of the areas of DC that you might want to check out than suburban MD is, but either area is safe and nice.
MARC and VRE only run on the weekdays (with the exception of special occasions), but the metro and amtrak run 7 days. DC also has an excellent bus system if you choose to learn it.
