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 Washing...