DC Adventures Part 1 : The Metro

On Sunday, a few of us from my floor decided to go into DC for the day. Well, by the time we gathered ourselves it was already the afternoon, but we made a day trip out of it.

SERC is located about 25 minutes away by car from the New Carrollton Metro station, the Eastern end of the Orange line of DC's Metro network. So we drove to the Metro station to start our journey. I'd gone to New Carrollton to take the Amtrak to go back to Bryn Mawr last weekend, but had never taken the Metro. The first thing I had to do was get a Metro card, also known as a SmarTrip card. Which has a $5 base charge in addition to however much I put on it. It may seem ridiculous to get a card with a $5 price already on it, but it makes sense when one considers that the only other option to by a paper ticket which tacks on an extra $1 for each ride.
So getting the SmarTrip card is a smart decision in the long run.


We all got on the train . . .
and went two stops to Cheverly . . .
where we found out that there was construction on the tracks for the whole weekend.

So we had to transfer to a complimentary shuttle service to get back on to the Orange line train at Stadium-Armory to continue into center city DC.

There's the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium right next to the Stadium-Armory station.

The Metro gets pretty busy on the weekends!
This picture is from Saturday afternoon, all the seats are full and its standing room only, even that is filling up.






These are the entrances from the street for two stations. I snapped that on the way down the escalators.


That's the Smithsonian station on the left and Foggy Bottom-GWU station on the right.

Throughout my trip, I realized that every single Metro station in DC looks exactly the same. The same grey domed walls and ceilings with inset rectangles. In fact, the only thing that changes between each station is the name. This station is Metro Central: a large transfer station for the Orange line, the Blue line, and the Red line, right in the heart of DC.

I'm not an expert, but I feel at least proficient with the DC Metro station after this trip!