National Harbor, Maryland

glennmagusharvey

National Harbor is basically this massive tourism/resort/conference/etc. area in Maryland, south of Washington, DC.  It is part of the Washington, DC metro area, and sits on waterfront of the eastern shore of the Potomac River.  It's also the annual site of Katsucon (an anime convention) and (nowadays) MAGFest (a gaming and music convention), among a ton of other events.

It is among the most inaccessible things that could still be considered accessible via the Metro, the DC metro area's subway system.  You have to go all the way to southeasternmost station, Branch Avenue on the green line.  Then you further take a shuttle bus that goes through Maryland suburbs and finally stops at this place that seems extremely incongruously dense and upscale, in the middle of nowhere (despite being on the shores of the Potomac).  If you're like me, and you need take the CUE bus (or equivalent) to the Vienna station (the westernmost station on the orange line), it will take you about two to three hours each way in a round trip.

Imagine doing that over a day.  Let's say you're going there for Katsucon, which is an entertainment convention, rather than anything business, so you don't have to be terribly worried about your schedule.  You can go and leave whenever you want, and you just want to make the most of your day.  Well, let's see, you could get at like 6 AM, and expect to get there by 10 AM.  9:30 AM if you're lucky, and going on Friday because there are more trains and buses running on Friday than on a weekend day.  However, in the late evening, there really aren't that many -- especially late at night.  The CUE bus doesn't even run at 11 PM, so either you've got to get back before then or be willing to take a taxi.  If you're going to do taxi, then I guess you could arrive back at Vienna as late as 2:30 AM ish (the Metro subways stop running at 3 AM on a Friday evening).  Subway trains are few and far between at night, so you'll be leaving at 11 PM (or maybe 10:30 PM; I'm not sure when the last shuttle bus from National Harbor to Branch Ave is) at the latest.

You just barely got in ten hours at the event.  However, if you were to do this again the next day, you'd be sleeping at around 4 AM unless you're really speedy with getting to bed, and waking up again at around 6:30 AM -- maybe getting 3 hours of sleep at most.

...ass.

Monsoon

In National Harbor's defense, it's extremely easy to get to via either of the 295 exits off of 395 or the Maryland half of the Beltway.  It's a specific space OBVIOUSLY designed for tourists and vacationers arriving via car or bus instead of people going via Metro.  It's self-contained shiny island of restaurants and bars with the massive Gaylord Hotel towering over it.  If you hated getting there now, just wait a few years when they build that proposition-approved casino there. 

But I'm not *exactly* trying to defend Nat'l Harbor.  It's kind of insufferable when it gets crowded (at MAGFest last year the Subway restaurant got shut down because it ran out of "key ingredients"), the bars are crazy-expensive, and parking is an expensive chore.  But the Gaylord is a pretty good convention space and has some decent commerce around.  You're still a scrub when it comes to getting around the DC area, GMH :P