Playing Tourist: Some Tips.

Ah yes, it's cherry-blossom season in Washington, DC.  Spring is a lovely time in the Nation's capital.  Blooms everywhere, lots of pollen, too.  Oh and one other thing that comes out in hordes this time of year: tourists.

Experiencing tourists from the flip-side, as someone living and commuting with them, I have learned some good lessons on how to be a better tourist when I travel, especially when it comes to using the local transit systems in a strange city:

1.  Avoid Public Transit During Rush Hour.  Enduring cranky office workers who just want to get home is not exactly fun.  Plus, it's of course more crowded and the crowds are experienced public transit users who have little patience for you as a novice on their turf.  If you can, travel on transit slightly before or after the major rush hour times.

2.  When on Public Transit: Observation and Research are Key.  Every transit system has its quirks.  So do a little homework before you leave for your trip so you have an understanding of how fares work (zone, flat rate) and how the system operates (do I need to know the last stop to figure out direction, hours, etc.).  When you start to use the system, pay attention to locals.  Are they walking up the escalators?  On the bus, do they need to signal when it's their stop?

3.  Be Courteous.  Yesterday, a group of tourists were toting around a screaming infant.  It was the middle of rush hour on a packed train and they were just ignoring the fact that their baby was screaming their lungs out.  Hey, I'm not one to offer parenting advice, but it's royally unfair to force everyone else listen to screaming baby.  Also, if a train is quiet (as the Metro is during morning rush hour) keep your voice down.  No one else really cares about your conversation and office workers may be trying to catch a few more moments of sleep or peace before sitting at their desks.  When on a subway, if you do not have to get off anytime soon, move away from the doors so people can easily exit. 

Breaking Up a Journey into Distinct Legs = Sometimes a Good Thing.

We overnighted in the aptly named A Stone's Throw Away

Call me paranoid, but when I learned that the flight from Cat Island would arrive in Nassau just 90 minutes before our international flight back to DC (on a different airline and in an entirely different terminal), I had visions of missing the flight and rushing around to find a hotel, of learning that the next flight out was entirely booked, etc.  So I made a decision.  A decision I would recommend to anyone with a tight turnaround in a foreign airport with flights on different airlines: we flew in from Cat, overnighted in Nassau and then calmly flew home to Washington, DC the next day. 

Like many airports, the Nassau airport has an older terminal for all of its domestic flights and a completely separate space for its international flights.  Plus, the tiny hopper flight we took to Cat Island was operated by Sky Bahamas and we needed to get on a US Airways flight back to DC.  Ironically, we ended up getting into Nassau a full 30 minutes early and would have probalby had time to make the DCA flight on the same day, yet, we took the opportunity to explore Nassau by hopping on a local bus and going down to the center of the city where all the cruise ships arrived.  It's fantatically touristy, but we enjoyed the people watching and the 30-minute bus ride gave us a good, local view of Nassau.  We then spend the afternoon on the hotel's lovely deck admiring the ocean and sipping beers.  In the evening, we walked down the street for dinner on the beach.  Really, a lovely day and a nice way to cap our trip.  Our Hotel, A Stone's Throw Away, was literally a 3-minute drive to the airport and they offer a free ride so it was so simple.  Having a final day on vacation and to catch our breath sort of summed up the purpose of the trip.

This wasn't our first time breaking up legs of a journey.  On our way to Greece last year, I blogged about our stopover on both ends of our trip in London.  It would have been impossible to get from London out to Stansted, but we really wanted to limit our flights to two:one from DC to London and then one from London to Rhodes.  Stopping over in London made the trip calmer and offered a few days in an entirely different climate, too!

So, consider breaking up that journey and exploring a new place along the way.