Hershey Park is only open for the first two weekends in April:
http://www.hersheypark.com/hours/index.php
Chocolate World is open pretty much year 'round:
Yup, IIRC they found her body in Rock creek Park.
I don’t think you can do Mount Vernon, Alexandria and Baltimore in a day – or it would be a long day. They are nearly opposite directions from DC. Baltimore is about an hour’s drive to the northeast, and the other two are to the south across the Potomac.
You could spend every minute of a week in the museums on and around the Mall and only see a fraction of what’s there, so give lots of thought to your priorities.
Here is Wiki’s list of DC museums. It doesn’t seem to include museums that are just outside the District’s borders.
So, here’s their list of Virginia museums. Arlington and Alexandria are right next door to DC. Some other cities on the list that aren’t real far away: Langley, Great Falls, Fairfax, Vienna, Mount Vernon, Lorton, Vienna, Leesburg, Reston. Maybe a few others, but my memory is failing.
And the list of museums in Maryland (Baltimore is about an hour’s drive)
Some other cities the list that are not prohibitively far: Annapolis, Columbia, Beltsville, Suitland, College Park, Bowie, Upper Marlboro, Glen Echo, Fort George G. Meade, Rockville, Greenbelt, Laurel, Oxon Hill, Germantown.
I admit Baltimore probably is not realistic. Probably we’ll check out Mount Vernon and Old Town in Alexandria in a day and drive around a bit. The Mall is pretty much where we’ll be centered for the next week or so.
This is assuming we can get a car. The rental website started asking me surrealistically impossible questions. I even called them in the US and asked what to do, and they’d not encountered this before. Gave up and will try again tomorrow.
I still recall sitting in my Beijing hotel room in August 2001 watching some lady talking head pontificate on the case. Then a month later she was on one of the hijacked 9/11 flights.
I admit Baltimore probably is not realistic. Probably we’ll check out Mount Vernon and Old Town in Alexandria in a day and drive around a bit. The Mall is pretty much where we’ll be centered for the next week or so.
This is assuming we can get a car. The rental website started asking me surrealistically impossible questions. I even called them in the US and asked what to do, and they’d not encountered this before. Gave up and will try again tomorrow.
Chandra Levy was the name of the woman who was murdered in Rock Creek Park. It turned out that a man who was already in jail for assaulting other women in the park was responsible and tha Congressman Condit had nothing to do with it, but he went out of his way to make it look like he did (he was caught throwing away a watch she had given him). But don’t let that scare you away, Rock Creek Park is a great urban park; on Saturdays and Sundays they close part of the roadway to vehicles and open it up to bikes and pedestrians, about a mile south of that point is the National Zoo.
Mt. Vernon, Old Town, DC and Baltimore in one day is not really viable, as you noted. You said you haven’t driven much in the past few years, traffic can be really horrific here. If you are around the Mall at lunchtime, the American Indian Museum has a great cafeteria. Also, there is ice skating on the mall (although I don’t know when they stop doing it for the season).
BTW, the Mall is all dug up right now as they are building a new museum and doing other landscaping and if you get off at the Smithsonian Metro and someone tries to sell you a map, it’s a racket: the maps can be had for free at a kiosk a few yards east of the Metro escalators.
The going out guide at www.washingtonposts.com has a listing for museums that lists what special exhibits are taking place.
I’m sure I’ll have no problem with driving. I always get back into the swing of it quickly, and I’ll have a few days of rural practice. Plus I’ll be insured, so I can play bumper cars if I get stressed, heh.
Thanks for the heads up on the Mall. Feels like everywhere we go is being dug up for one thing or another. Thanks for the tip on the maps too.
I’m sure you’d do fine on the road, it’s just that rush hour in the DC area is a profoundly miserable experience, but when you are actually in the city, it’s not that big of a deal (except around 14th street or the other arteries in and out of the city).
Parking is a bigger problem than driving.
That’s true, I assumed the hotel had parking for the car.
Unfortunately, the hotel we’ve booked doesn’t have parking and “recommends” a nearby carpark that costs something like $25 a day or overnight or something. May be the parking lot DCnDC recommended on the previous page, as we’re staying in DuPont Circle. We may be switching places though if we can get something good on Priceline.
But we do have the car now. The website worked tonight, and we’ve reserved and paid for a car for four days, Philadelphia-DC via Gettysburg.
NM
Today’s Washington Post had an article on planning a trip to DC. Oddly, I can’t seem to find that artticle on their website, but I did find some other similar pieces. You might need to register to view the article, but it’s free.
BTW, did you know that DC was recently voted the 3rd rudest city in America by a travel magazine? We’ll have to try harder.
Here are a couple of articles
http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/dc-visitors-guide.html
Huh.
Well, we do have the worst traffic (seriously - we used to be second after LA but we beat 'em a couple years back), so I guess that’s something ;).
I don’t think we are rude so much as we don’t give a shit.
That’s how I see it, but to the recipient the effect is the same either way.
We wouldn’t need to be rude at all if people would just stand on the right on the god-damned escalators.
Isn’t that the root cause of 50% of the city’s homicides this year? The other 50% being Maryland drivers. 
God, Maryland drivers, they just piss me off so much. If a car comes speeding through my neighborhood, doesn’t stop at the sign and then ignores pedestrians in the crosswalk, I don’t even have to look for the MD tags.
What neighborhood in DC has traffic light enough for cars to speed in?