Are you going?

Looks like the whole nation is already making plans for January 20th...where will you be?

D.C. hotels almost full for inauguration
BY ELLEN CREAGER
• FREE PRESS TRAVEL WRITER •
NOVEMBER 6, 2008


Just one day after Sen. Barack Obama was elected president, nearly every hotel in and around Washington, D.C., was sold out for Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.

But where there is a will, there's a way.

"I heard the closest hotel open was in Maryland," said Crystal Smith of Detroit, who plans to travel with a large group on several coaches to Washington on Jan. 19.

"But it's not a bad thing, because we can sleep on the bus. We can camp out on the buses, take blankets and leave the heat on, and we'll have bathrooms on the bus."

As of Wednesday, her idea wasn't looking so bad.

The Hyatt Fair Lakes in Fairfax, Va., still had available rooms for Jan. 19-22 at a rate of $339 a night, but the rooms had to be paid in advance and were nonrefundable. The Wingate Chantilly Dulles Airport had openings for $297 per night with the same restrictions. Other rooms were even further out.

"I'm finding rooms in Baltimore," said Pam Nikitas, owner of Joan Anderson Travel in Detroit. "But I'm not finding anything in the city."

However, flights were easy to find. The fare for a Jan. 19-22 round-trip from Detroit to Washington Reagan National Airport was $221 on U.S. Airways and $247 on Northwest Airlines.

The Greyhound bus might take 15 hours, but an advance nonrefundable fare was just $75 round-trip. And with cheap gas prices, driving the 9 1/2 hours at $2.19 a gallon would cost roughly $44 each way.

Watching the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue on Jan. 20 is free, but if you want to join in inaugural balls or activities, it'll cost you plenty.

Web sites such as InauguralTickets.com and GreatSeats.com were selling bleacher and viewing stand parade tickets for about $400 and up. Tickets for the actual swearing-in ceremony ranged from about $600 for standing on the National Mall to about $15,000 for two VIP seats. Tickets for inaugural balls were running about $1,300 and up. Smith, who invented the Obama Hustle dance and will try to perform it in D.C., also has one other plan for her Inauguration Day trip.

Before the coaches leave Detroit, she wants them to drive into Woodlawn Cemetery on Woodward, past the tomb of Rosa Parks.

"I want to ride past her grave on the bus, then straight out of town to Washington," she said.