Arrival to D.C.
Washington D.C. is served by three international airports:
1. Washington Reagan National Airport (DCA) - https://www.flyreagan.com/ (often locally referred to as “National”) - DCA is very close to downtown DC and the CBEP meeting site on the National Mall at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), and is on the Metrorail system Blue and Yellow lines.
2. Washington Dulles Airport (IAD) - https://www.flydulles.com/ - IAD is about 50 minutes from downtown DC via the Metrorail Silver line.
3. Baltimore/Washington International (BWI) - https://bwiairport.com/ - BWI is about an hour from downtown DC, and public transit is to Union Station via the Marc Train. Union Station is DC’s main train station for passenger rail and is also on the Metrorail Red line. Arriving at BWI public transit to NMNH would require a shuttle from BWI to Marc train station, Marc train to Union Station, Walk to the Metrorail station at Union Station, Metrorail Red line from Union Station to Gallery Place/Chinatown stop or Metro Center stop. If going to Gallery Place, then transfer to the Metrorail Yellow line to the Archives Metro stop, which is ~10 min walk to NMNH.
Flights to BWI are sometimes less expensive than to the other two airports, but note that getting into downtown DC and the CBEP meeting will take longer and be more expensive. Also, IMPORTANT NOTE, if you are going on the field trip, we will not be able to get you close to BWI on Saturday afternoon. We will be delivering field trip participants to either the southern terminus of the Metro Blue/Yellow line, which goes to DCA, or to a Metro stop on the Silver line near IAD.
Transportation in D.C.
Downtown DC is relatively compact and easy to navigate via Metrorail trains, which run frequently. The closest stops to the CBEP meeting site at NMNH are Smithsonian, Federal Triangle (both on the Blue, Orange and Silver lines), and Archives (Yellow and Green lines). Metro Center, the hub for all lines, is about a 15-minute walk from the Constitution Ave entrance of NMNH, which is the entrance we will use for CBEP. DC also has a widespread system of public bikes (Capitol Bike Share https://capitalbikeshare.com/) and there are several other bike, e-bike, and e-scooter services that operate in DC (but not always in Virginia – attend to maps of their service areas!)
You can learn more about the Washington DC area mass transit from the Metrorail site: https://www.wmata.com/service/rail/