What's Not To Love About D.C. ... Besides Outrageous Housing Prices, a Few Crazy Taxi Drivers, and the Occasional Bomb Scare?

(One of several posts where I write about some of favorite things about D.C.)

Nothing. The D.C. area, and specifically, Alexandria, Virginia, and Fairfax, Virginia, are great places to live.

This is the first of several posts of me reminiscing about some of my experiences living in the Washington, D.C., area. These articles will serve as some sort of scrapbook for me, and I hope they will help others who are visiting or moving to D.C.

So what's not to love? Yes, as is the case in many big cities, you may have trouble finding affordable housing. But there are some good rental deals out there, and my husband and I found some.

I have too many scary taxi driver stories to count. One of my more memorable drivers was talking on his cell phone and, I kid you not, doing a crossword puzzle while weaving in and out of traffic.

And the bomb scares – well, fortunately all of them were false alarms, and I was just a spectator. Most of them happened on the street behind my office building, so the only inconvenience to me and my coworkers was finding a way around the yellow police tape. But there was that one time when we all had to leave our work building because of a suspicious package in the building next door. All of us were annoyed for the interruption of a busy workday. Well, I guess it’s better to be safe than sorry…

One bomb scare I passed by was in the Capitol Building parking lot. A friend of mine and I were walking by when we noticed the inordinate number of police cars and vans gathered in the lot. Our curiosity piqued, we asked a man standing by a media van what the story was. He told us, and we went on our way.

Heaven knows there are more things wrong with D.C. For example, the crime rate is pretty typical for a town its size, but it’s not as bad as most people think. The only time we were affected by crime was the time some amateurs attempted to steal our car.



They stole our CDs and our stereo, but they didn’t take the car, though they obviously tried to. Fortunately for us, they didn’t break our car window to get in. Our neighbors weren’t so lucky. The culprits broke their window and stole their radio, which wasn’t even working.

Well, enough about some of the lame parts of the D.C. area. All of these problems I mentioned are not unique to D.C. Like I said, D.C. is awesome, and I have so many wonderful memories. I'll highlight some of those memories in my next posts.