By Melissa Raymond
Do you enjoy being hassled while traveling? Neither do I. Fortunately, I have learned how to weekend travel by finding the path of least resistance. Instead of telling you where to go in a city (which will become a tourist hot spot, or worse, taken over by hipsters immediately after printing), I’ll teach you how to find these places yourself. Whether you are in a small college town, or a big city you have never been to before, these simple tips will to turn your mind-numbing, weekend-sucking conference into a glorious mini vacation, or help you make the best of a weekend road trip.
Take DC, for example. Before you even get to DC, or any big city for that matter, book a hotel right in the heart of the city. Yes, it maybe a little more expensive, but it will balance out by during your trip by eliminating the cost and inconvenience of using a taxi. Additionally, when you are able to explore the city at your leisure, you can just walk around at will, without planning out extensive and costly transportation.
Once you arrive at your hotel, there will most likely be a concierge who will have a plethora of pamphlets of all the main attractions. Mapping out your weekend with these carbon copy plans is a one-way ticket to an overpriced, overcrowded, lackluster weekend. However, the concierge can be quite useful if you ask the right questions. Ask them where they go to eat after work. Most of them will try to give you their rehearsed list of touristy restaurants, but try asking again. Put your food pickiness aside, and let them know you are in a hurry and just want an inexpensive but tasty meal before heading to your conference. This will usually lead to a locally owned, small eatery that even people who have recently moved to the city don’t know about. I learned about a restaurant called Sticky Rice after asking a metro worker where to go for good sushi on Capitol Hill. It offers some of the best sushi and bucket of tater tots (yes tater tots and sushi make a great combination) on the Hill. I suggest asking the same line of questions to the people you meet who live and work in the city. You can go into a store and ask a clerk or even stop a city worker or cop on the street.
Now that you have your hotel room and meals set, explore the city… for free. Some of the best attractions, especially in DC, are free. Walk around the National Mall and take advantage of the world-class museums like the Smithsonian. This may seem a little obvious and stereotypical of a trip to the capitol but there is a right and a wrong way to go about museum and monument hopping. The wrong way: staying in one museum for more than 45 minutes, getting stuck behind some of the slowest walkers known to mankind, getting trapped on a tour bus trying to take pictures of the most historic monuments while your bus driver tries to navigate DC traffic and having said pictures utterly ruined by fanny-pack-wearing tourists. By the end of the trip you are ready to kill yourself.
The right way to hit some of the heaviest trafficked attractions in DC is to. Speed-walk all of the museums, and, for the love of God, avoid everyone with a stroller, child, or obnoxiously giant camera at all costs. I know a lot of you reading this may take issue with the idea of speed-walking a museum, but if you are only there for a weekend, it is best to sample as many as you can. This way you know which ones are worth spending a whole day in next time you visit. Each museum has a secret way of navigating it so that you can avoid the huddled masses. One way to spot these magical pathways is to look at how the museum workers get around. For example, in the Natural History museum, there is the rotunda which gawkers spend forever in, taking countless pictures. If you go to the area behind the row columns, there is a beltway-like path, free of stagnant tourists, that leads to every exhibit on the first floor. Fight the urge to gawk at every little thing in the entire museum while sampling. Try to pick one or two things per exhibit that really peak your interest, or maybe something that will only be there for a limited time. Take a look, and move on.
There are two methods to properly monument hop. The first is for people who have never seen the DC monuments up close. For this group of people, go during the day and take a good five minutes looking at it. Wait for something to really catch your eye. The real fun begins when you stakeout the perfect place to people watch, perhaps on the monument itself. Watching people trip over one another to get the best view and getting in the way of each other’s photos is one the most entertaining shows in all of Washington. During the most popular vacationing periods, like the Cherry Blossom Festival, for example, you may have to be a bit craftier when visiting the monuments. There are paddle boats for rent at the lake that runs right in the middle of the Cherry Blossom Park. By renting one of these headache-saving watercrafts, you break out of the suffocating swarm of people, on the relaxing water. An added bonus: you can see the unobstructed view of the cherry blossoms against backdrops of the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Monument. For the second group of monument hoppers, go at night and go drunk (provided you are over the age of 21 of course). “So I was drunken monument hopping and…” is the beginning to some of the best stories about Washington I have ever heard. Drunken monument hopping is the way to go, plain and simple.
For other night life options, find the designated gay area. For DC, it is called Dupont Circle. Whether you are gay or not, it is most likely the safest area in the Washington, or any city, at night. Let go of any inhibitions and party with the LGBTQA community. Gay bars are usually your best bet when trying to find a club in a city you have rarely or never visited. Think about it. Gay bars usually consist of gay men and straight women. So for the ladies, go can go to a bar where you don’t have strange men, in a strange city hitting on you. For the guys, put away the macho-ness and enjoy having someone buying you the drinks for a change. And for the gays, welcome home. Just be ready to dance until the wee hours of the morning.
The most important tip to weekend traveling is that it’s only a weekend trip. Don’t stress yourself trying to cram everything you ever wanted to do in the city in a few days. Use this time to sample what the area has to offer and go back to work with some stories to tell on Monday.
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