Our neighborhood!

The map below is a Google Map aerial view of the DC Metro area, and our neighborhood in Alexandria. I originally created the map to help with the apartment search, but now that we're done, I've removed the markers for the other apartments, and I'll be adding markers for grocery stores and the like. (Click the "View Larger Map" link to get a panel with a complete listing and description of the various markers.)

If you take a closer look, the green "arrow and star" marker is our apartment complex, though the aerial photograph is maybe four or five years old and still shows it as a construction site. The two large gray structures are the two parking garages, which were apparently built first.

Slightly northeast of that, about a block away, is the US Patent & Trademark Office campus. The entire construction site south of Jamieson Ave, east of Elizabeth Ln, west of John Carlyle Ave, and north of Eisenhower Ave, is the current USPTO campus, and is fully developed, except for a new private development going up in the area. Again, the aerial photographs are quite out of date. Given that Pam's commute will clearly be rather short, compare that to my commute, which is actually pretty fast at about 60 minutes door-to-door. Actual time spent on the train is maybe 30-45 minutes, 5-10 minutes walking on either side, and a 5-10 minute shuttle ride from the Brookland-CUA Metro station to the Children's National Medical Center. Anything less than an hour and a half each way to my grandmother's house in Queens on the NYC subway in the middle of the summer is amazing to me.

I've also plotted the path of the DC Metrorail system (pretty accurate for the at- or above-ground segments, best guess for underground) and most of the stations on the portions of the lines I'll likely use.


View Larger Map

I'll add more markers to the map as we discover more in the neighborhood.