Wistfully whiling away time in Washington while wife works

Thanks to everyone for their input!!!

Cherry Hill is worth the $. They even have free orientation sessions to explain the various transit options. Nothing simpler!

We stayed at Cherry Hill and really liked it. A city bus came right to the main check in area quite frequently, which then connected you to metro or bus service. We visited all the monuments this way.

While staying at Cherry Hill, drive to the next exit east which is the "station". Two minute drive versus 45 minutes fir the bus route the get there.

We stayed at Cherry Hill. Yes, we paid more but really liked the convenience of the public transportation.

We have done Lake Fairfax a few times. Much less $ than Cherry Hill. Plenty room between sites. Many very long sites. Inside a very large park with plenty of trails if that is of interest. Not far from the Dulles Air & Space Museum, which outdoes the one downtown many times over. Not near any major highways so no noise. Were it not for the Dulles air traffic, which is not much in the evening, you would think that you are miles away from any city.

For tourist and those unfamiliar with the area Cherry HIll is without a doubt your best bet. Great place that is well run and caters to the tourist crowd.
There are a few more economical options but they require you some knowledge of the area vs. being a total tourist.

That is fantastic information DrewE ! Thank you!!

Lake Fairfax is about a two mile walk from the nearest Metro station, so maybe 45 minutes each way. (Don't believe their web site which is outdated and states it's about ten miles. Apparently that was before they finished the latest phase of the Silver line extension.)

All the transit passes, etc. are loaded onto farecards. I think the buses also accept cash (exact change). For general touring of Washington, DC, the seven-day metrorail pass is probably the most economical and certainly the simplest to figure out. You pay about $60 up front and can take Metrorail anywhere within the system anytime its open for a week. That pretty well covers most of what you're likely to want to see in the city, especially if you're willing to do a little walking to get to e.g. the national zoo. You can get the pass (and your farecard) at the metro station from one of the vending machines there, paying either in cash or with a credit card. For your wife, you may have to figure some figures to see what plan would be the most economical. Paying per trip is a bit of an annoyance on the Metro because the fares vary with distance (starting and ending stations) and the time of day.

If you want to take a bus somewhere with the metrorail pass, you just use one of the vending machines to add the necessary fare onto the card, and then use the card to pay when getting on the bus. When I visited Washington in November for a week, the only time I took a bus was to get to the Air and Space museum annex at Dulles airport--and that was well worth the extra money and hassle to see, as it's a very impressive (and very large) collection of unique and historical aircraft.

I found the National Building Museum's free tour to be fascinating. The paid exhibits were decent, but to do again I would skip them and just take the tour.

We stayed at Cherry Hill last year on our way to Maine. Great Place. Buses run from the park to the transit system several times a day. They also offered a bus tour of the DC area that was good.