The Metro is the lifeblood of DC travel, [lucky you] especially since gas prices have shot through the Capitol Dome. You can get just about anywhere within the district on the Metro.  And even some places you’d never want to.

If you have no idea what the “Metro” is, we’ll explain.

Metro is a quasi-reliable electric train that travels both below and above ground and sometimes not at all. During the winter it carries flu-ridden passengers, who never have tissues- and rancid-smelling folks during the summer.

Schedules: The trains come every few minutes during workday hours and rarely if ever after 8pm. Lucky for you, there is a website that attempts to predict train schedules, but because that too blows, we didn’t take time to find a link. If you enter “metro, schedule, train, unreliable, DC, timetable, blows” into your favorite search engine [Google] – see if you get lucky.

Seating: Good luck. Unless you board at originating destinations, you’ll be standing – which would be fine if the well-trained Metro conductors knew how to operate brakes. They don’t. They never will.

Tunes: If you by chance forget to bring headphones for your trip, no worries, there’s a good chance the dingleberry standing next to you will have theirs cranked too loud.

Walk, don’t run: Don’t run for trains that are closing their doors. It never turns out well. Ever been the person who sprinted past grandma, knocked her down, and then missed the train? Yeah, well we have – and trust us, it’s a long 20 minutes until the next train.

Go with the flow: The best part about metro, all the station work. At any given point, your train might stop, for minutes at a time. And if you’re on a train that stops, don’t worry about anxiously awaiting some announcement. It’ll happen, but you won’t be able to understand it.

And remember, DC Metro opens doors. Sporadically, but they open.

Enjoy your trip.

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