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We spent our first two weeks in DC walking almost everywhere. Much of our time was spent exploring Georgetown and neighboring parts of the city like Wisconsin Avenue. Also, it was only four miles on foot into the center of DC from our apartment and although there was a 50¢ shuttle bus to the Foggy Bottom Metro station we rarely used it.

However, once we moved from Georgetown to Rosslyn, VA walking into DC proper was an extra couple of miles and so more time consuming as well as more tiring. Although we didn't give up walking altogether, we did tend to take public transportation more often. For one thing, Rosslyn, unlike Georgetown, had its own Metro Station so we purchased a Metro card and often rode the rails either to Capitol Hill or to 17th Street and Connecticut Avenue to one of the nearby think tanks. Our Metro journeys were memorable to us for their beginnings and endings rather than the journeys themselves. Rosslyn Metro Station was deep, deep underground and access to the platform was by an exceedingly long escalator. Outward journeys therefore began with a lickety split descent of the escalator down into the bowels of the earth. Homeward journeys, however, were a veritable battle against limited lung capacity, first, and later as our lungs expanded with muscle capacity. All in all, we climbed 90+ steps every time we came home by Metro, the equivalent of a nine or ten-story building. We didn't have to, of course, but we each egged the other on...

Rosslyn also had two kinds of bus. First, it was the terminus of the Georgetown shuttle bus, so we had easy access through Georgetown to Foggy Bottom and our think tanks. And then there was the Metrobus. It took us a few days to discover that it was really true. And when we did, boy did we like the subsidy we were getting: Every bus ride entitles you to an automatic transfer. This transfer allows you to ride unlimited buses for two hours. Sometimes drivers mark it a little wrong and it becomes a three or even four hour "ride free" card. So what is thedown side? None for us, but the papers say that after holding the fares steady since 1997 (or was it 1995) at $1.10 a ride the MATA may need to raise the fare to NYC levels of $1.50(just as NYC is going to $2.00)