What I Use: Washington D.C. 2021 (Premium)

About a month ago, my wife and I began plotting our first real travel in well over a year. We decided to start small, and semi-local, with a drive. To Washington D.C.

We have bigger travel plans for the rest of 2021, given our expectations that everyone in the family, and most people we’ll encounter out in the world, will be vaccinated within a few months. Indeed, we’re well underway: I got my first vaccination last week, as did our daughter, and our son texted us this morning to tell us he was getting his first vaccination next week. My wife will be part of a coming wave of vaccinations—every state does things a bit differently, of course—though it’s not clear yet when that will happen.

What is clear is that it will happen. And that, for us as a couple and as a family, getting vaccinated is like getting a second type of passport. Perhaps literally, in the sense that a vaccination or negative COVID test may be a future requirement for flying to certain locations. But also figuratively because being vaccinated will make us feel safer to get on an airplane or be in crowded places with lots of other people.

Once my wife has scheduled her first vaccination, we’ll book our first post-pandemic flight, probably to Mexico City. And we’ll (re)book what would have been a 30th anniversary trip to Paris last May for later this fall when the expected summer travel explosion subsides. That’s the plan, anyway.

But we’ve been itching to travel. And even before we were vaccinated or I was scheduled for my first vaccination, we had discussed short local or semi-local trips, perhaps in the form of a long weekend. Philadelphia was a possibility, but that city is still locked down to a degree that makes it uninteresting for now. Boston will happen, probably in May, because we have friends and family there, and they’re all starting down the vaccination path as well. (My wife’s parents are now fully vaccinated.)

Washington D.C. was the obvious choice.

It’s just three and a half hours by car. Hotels tend to be cheaper on the weekends there, the opposite of many destinations, and they’re even cheaper now because of the pandemic. It’s perhaps the ultimate walking city—as good and as pretty as Paris—with tons of free monuments, memorials, gardens, and other outside locations that we can safely visit. The museums, also free, are all closed right now, which is a shame, but I suspect my wife wouldn’t want to go in one until we were vaccinated either.

From a lockdown perspective, D.C. is operating similarly to where we live in Pennsylvania: Restaurants are open to 25 percent capacity, but there is no bar seating or service, and everything shuts down at 10:00 pm. Thanks to its earlier spring, the city is starting to bloom, and many restaurants have adapted to the pandemic by offering more outside seating, often with heaters.

And I know this city, love this city. I’ve been visiting Washington D.C. my whole life, and having spent two summers here as a child, it triggered by subsequent love of travel and is still one of my favorite places on earth. I know my way around, I know where things are, I know the restaurants and other places we like to frequent, and I even know some people here. I have traveled here as much as any place I’ve ever been; I came here with my family when I was growing up, I’ve come here with multiple friends, I’ve come here with my wife, I’ve come with my own kids, and I’ve come by myself. I’ve come for work reasons, and for play. I just love D.C.

We started looking at the weather over the previous three weekends and said no twice, but with this past weekend approaching, everything seemed to line up. And so I booked three nights at the Hilton Capitol, which is about two blocks north of the White House, and my wife made reservations at three of our favorite restaurants. (Two others are temporarily closed because of the pandemic.) The plan was simple enough: Walk a lot and see the city from one end of the Mall to the other, doing a sort-of “greatest hits” tour since it had been a while since our last trip. (We visited D.C. three times in 2019, and not at all last year because of the pandemic.)

This timing was also good because Brad’s away now, and for the remainder of this coming week. We recorded First Ring Daily early so we’d be able to leave at a reasonable time. My wife dropped off the dog at the kennel she loves, we have relatives coming by the house to feed the cats, and we left for D.C. at about noon on Friday. Within 30 or 40 minutes, I had driven further from the house than I had for most of the pandemic and we left the state for only the second time in 14 months; the only other time was late September/early October 2021 when we drove our daughter to college in North Carolina.

My biggest concern wasn’t being out in the world amongst the unwashed, unvaccinated masses; I knew we’d do a good job of keeping our distance from others. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy being away. When we were in North Carolina last fall, we went through the motions of checking out a couple of places we’d never really been before, like Charlotte and Asheville. But the whole trip felt stressful, and we were operating under the fear that we’d go to all that trouble, drive home, and find out that Kelly’s school was shutting down and sending everyone home. That didn’t happen, fortunately. But at the time, it seemed possible, if not probable.

This time around, things are different. The country is getting vaccinated, and by the time we left, over 22 percent of the population had gotten at least one shot. Our kids have experienced about two-thirds of a school year with no stupidity at all, and it’s clear that they’ll both have mostly in-person classes by the time the year winds down, as opposed to all virtual classes when it started. Logically, I know everything is going to be OK. But emotionally, one still worries. And so I made a promise to myself to treat this trip as something that was both normal and safe. And just enjoy it.

I am delighted to report that this has worked out wonderfully. Washington D.C., as I had hoped and expected, is doing a fine job at socially distancing, with the vast majority of people wearing masks correctly, even when they’re out biking or running. Our long-time haunts, in particular restaurants, are certainly struggling, and they will welcome tourists back when they arrive en-masse starting this summer. But they’re also doing the right thing with regards to spreading out seats, performing contact tracing, and enforcing mask use. It’s felt safe.

As important, D.C. is still D.C. It’s a beautiful place to visit, both day and night. We’ve gone on long walks throughout the city each day—over 20,000 steps each time—and we’ve tried to visit as many favorite restaurants and bars (which are now adapted to serving at least some food because of pandemic requirements) as we can, though we have several that will have to wait for the next trip too.

We used Google Maps to navigate here, of course, and it recommended taking I-476 (the Pennsylvania Turnpike) to I-95 for most of the trip. We only passed through three states: Pennsylvania, of course, plus Delaware, briefly, and then Maryland.

When I drive long distances by myself, I usually past the time listening to podcasts, audiobooks, or music. But when I drive with my wife, I usually alternate between talking and periods of silence, and that was pretty much the case on this uneventful drive. But we did listen to a podcast interview with Mark Bittman, who just published a new book, so that killed about 45 minutes of the 3.5-hour drive. I use Pocket Casts for podcasts, in part because it’s compatible with the Sonos system we have at home.

I’ve not done too much work on this trip, but I have had a few hours each day to write, since we return to the hotel in the early afternoon each day to rest our throbbing feet. Having finally caught up on my long-overdue laptop reviews, I’m back on track to finish up my Intel Evo series, so I brought the Razer Book 13 and Apple MacBook Pro M1 with the hopes of adding some semblance of normal, real-world use to my coming reviews. I’ve been able to use both to some degree.

I packed both laptops, plus their power cords, my “go bag” (with its collection of mobile chargers, cables, extension cord, and so on), an extra smartphone, and more into the HP Renew Backpack that I purchased in late 2020. This bag is going to work out well, in particular for longer trips like home swaps, where I need to bring multiple PCs.

On our first night here, we returned to the hotel a bit on the early side and my wife asked about listening to music, since we usually do that on Friday nights. I hadn’t thought to bring the Sonos Move with us on this trip, and my wife kind of lit up when I mentioned that, but I feel like thumping sound from a hotel room isn’t necessarily a great idea. So I came up with a compromise: We watched a Taylor Swift documentary on Disney+ called Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions using the MacBook Pro. The audio/video experience was great, but it killed about 20 percent of the battery.

On Friday night, Fitbit began alerting me that my Versa 3 smartwatch’s battery was getting low and, go figure, but I had forgotten the charger at home. Generally, I get a spare charger for traveling, but because I got the Versa 3 last year during the pandemic, I hadn’t bothered. And now I was going to have to figure it out.

Fortunately, the Versa 3 gets several days of battery life, and when Fitbit sends that first notification, the device is down to 25 percent battery. I’ve worn it nonstop since, both while awake and asleep, and as I write this almost exactly two days later, the battery life is at 7 percent and it’s still recording all my activity and sleep. I assume it will die before we get home tomorrow, but it was at least able to record all of the walking I did here. Fitbit battery life for the win.

Walking around D.C., I’ve been using my Google Pixel 4a 5G and my wife has been using her Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G. At home during the pandemic, I was getting literally two full days of battery life out of the Pixel, but here in D.C., I’ve charged it every night because I’m using it a lot more. I’m happy with the quality of the photos I’ve taken, but I miss having a telephoto lens, and on a few occasions, I’ve asked my wife to try a few shots with her camera system that are impossible on mine. The long-distance stuff is impressive on the Samsung.

We experienced a few interesting milestones. Our first public transportation use in 14 months; we used the NJ Transit train to get into New York City in February 2020. And our first ride-sharing experience in the same timeframe; we had last used Uber on a February 2020 trip to Florida. I had to install the Uber and Lyft (and Hilton) apps on my phone for the first since they weren’t needed until now.

From a packing perspective, we always go light, but you can ease up a bit on that when you’re going by car. We both brought one piece of luggage and one laptop bag, as always, but I did bring an extra pair of shoes and an extra jacket just because I wasn’t sure about the weather. Nothing too strenuous.

As I write this, we’ve got one last dinner and night in D.C. ahead of us, and then we’ll drive home sometime during the day, hopefully in a leisurely, non-rushed way. I’m glad we did this, and I’m now looking forward to the other travel that I know will happen in 2021. And that we can finally put the dumpster fire that was 2020 in the rearview mirror for good.