WOW are Washington DC hotels expensive!

[golfgal]

When in June are you planning your trip? Anytime near Memorial Day weekend or the last few days before July 4th are expensive.

Hotels are also more expensive during the week instead of like the normal weekend. If you could swing staying Friday through the weekend and even a day or two into the week would save you money. The metro is halfprice on the weekends and free parking at the metro.

Hotels in Old Town Alexandria are really nice and they have a huge Embassy Suites right near the King Street metro. You can walk to it with no problems though I don't know how much parking is.

One book that I recommend and still use living here is the DC for Dummies guide.

I agree with all of this. The Embassy Suites in Alexandria is perfect. Don't discount the fact that they give you a nice breakfast with the room. Food in DC is VERY expensive-breakfast will cost you close to $50 for the 5 of you at just a plain old breakfast place like Perkins. The really nice thing about Alexandria is that you can take the free trolley into downtown and bum around there in the evenings. It is very safe and a lot of fun shops/restaurants, etc.

You can also take the metro right from Reagan to the hotel-luggage and all--so you don't need a car. The metro is VERY easy to use and half the fun of going to DC. We got week-long unlimited passes when we were there because you will want it for getting around town too. We also took it as far as we could then hopped on a bus to go to Mount Vernon-again, VERY easy to do.

 

[Magpie]

Being from Chicago I thought I was used to expensive cities but geesh! We are taking a road trip to Monticello and then DC in June (DH is totally geeking out, he is so excited! ) Looking through hotels dot com, it is hard to find something reasonable. I like the Embassy Suites downtown, expensive but at least they feed you and the location is great.

I started looking further out, Alexandria, Silver Springs, but it isn't that much less and then we would have to take the train in every day.

I am taking into consideration that almost all the museums/sites are free so that does help.

Any suggestions where a family of three with an 11 yo (gosh, I can't believe DD will be 11!) can stay and not break the bank?

Haven't read everything, so my apologies if this has been mentioned..

When we go, we stay at the Best Western near the New Carrolton subway station northeast of D.C. It's in Maryland, but it's easy to just hop on the Metro and it takes you anywhere in D.C. within about half an hour. And you don't have the hassle of parking. It was roughly a hundred dollars a night, with a free breakfast.

Taking the train every morning really isn't a big deal. The trains are nice and quick and they take you right to the Mall. We've never had to wait more than a few minutes for a subway train.

(I wish ours were so nice!)

 

[eduk8r26]

If you sign up for travelzoo.com they will send you the top 20 travel deals every week. They frequently have some good deals for DC.