by Gary Gagne

Created on: November 24, 2009

How to do DC on a shoestring

(Death by squirrel)

Outside of going to work and a weekly shopping trip, I never leave the house ,really. So it rocked my world when my wife decided to go to Argentina for or a visit with her family. She hadn't been to Argentina for a long time so she needed to renew her passport. The only way to renew a passport from Argentina was go to Washington DC. Now, back 30 years ago DC was my stomping ground, I was stationed just outside of DC. So I had a nave confidence that we could pull this off, without spending much money at all. We would drive to DC, stay in a Motel 6, and use the Metro to get to the Argentine embassy. That, was a plan! And while my wife was getting a passport I would run around Washington taking pictures, seeing the sights, And taking a tour of the White House.

So we drove six hours to Washington. As I approached the city I noticed the highways had changed. In fact, they weaved in and out in all directions and soared to the sky like the Tower of Babel. My GPS helped us untangle the situation but fear was a constant companion. When we entered the city we were driving down 14th St. . Back in the day, 14 Street was a den of iniquity lined with prostitutes and adult entertainment of all sorts on a nightly basis. I will spare you the details (suffice it to remind you that I was in the service at the time). Gone were the prostitutes, I saw busy people bustling to and fro apparently happy just to be living and working in a gentrified DC. Gone was the hometown feel of the place too , the traffic was like New York City, aggravating as hell! But the place was still dangerous and you could feel it in your bones. On my frantic drive in, I didn't see any ghettos. I thought, maybe they had priced the poor people out of Washington. When we finally arrived at Motel 6, I was astonished at how little the room was, how uncomfortable the bed, and how frugally appointed the room. I never thought that I live in the lap of luxury until I compared my bed with a Motel 6 bed. There was no wireless connection and the TV was too dark. There was no complementary breakfast but we did get free coffee in the morning. I obviously got what I paid for. When the matron asked me, ... how did you like your stay at Motel 6?, I could only answer with another question, What's to like?.

During the course of the night I had plenty of time to think about how we would get to the Argentine embassy in the morning. There was no Metro, other than buses,

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