Some cities are easy to figure out. And others are not. I do not own a GPS but I do have a compass in my car and I do have a fairly good sense of direction. So, the other day I set out with my daughter in the car after a lovely tea party in the DC suburb of Arlington Virginia. We decided we would take a quick side trip through Georgetown and Georgetown University. It is just across the bridge and right next to the downtown area of Washington DC.
So, we set off with our map, plenty of time and a sense of humor. Little did we know that we would need all three.
We drove across the bridge into downtown Georgetown and I could immediately see the appeal. It is very quaint. It was also very crowded. All the darling stores were decorated for the holidays and shoppers were out in droves. Every parking spot was filled and there was a major cluster of activity. Besides that one of the streets was closed down with some kind of street fair. It was charming, lovely, busy and just a little bit too much of a cluster for us to find a quick parking spot and get out to walk around. Besides that our plan was just to drive through and get the feel for the area so we could come back on a day when it wasn’t so crowded. ( If there ever is such a time in Georgetown ). I was having a little bit of a flash back because most of the people walking up and down the streets were dressed in a style right out of the preppy handbook published in 1980 something.
We kept driving and found our way shortly in to the downtown area of DC. I began to recognize some of the streets and we drove by the whitehouse but all of sudden we found ourselves trapped in a traffic circle. I wasn’t even quite sure how we got stuck in this roundabout but on the second time around we started getting the giggles and decided that sinces we didn’t recognize any of the streets on the first time around ( or on the second that we would just take the first road we could get to.
Finally we were out of the traffic circle and on a road that was as tightly packed as in Georgetown. And somehow the lane we were in went absolutely no where. It just ended. With no designated lane or merge sign to assist us. We did know we had to drive forward. Again this led to a pretty good laugh.
With out of state plates and clear confusion we waited at the next light. I saw some motion out of the corner of my eye and I looked at the car next to us. The lady was motioning for us to roll down our window. I thought that maybe one of my tail lights had been busted or maybe we had a coat hanging out of one of the closed doors. But instead she asked us if we knew the way to the spy museum. What? Us? We were polite but it was hard not to really break out laughing. We didn’t even know our way out of the traffic circle.
We checked our map and we were on a good road so we kept going until we wound up at the University of Maryland ( also a lovely campus ). From UM it is an easy jaunt up to the Beltway which leads to every main highway out of DC and I knew my way from there.
But I was definitely glad that we had a map, some time, and had a sense of humor.