My wife and I have had a tradition of traveling for our wedding anniversary. We have had some really great trips, but fell off the wagon the past few years. Since our 15th anniversary is this October, I wanted to resume the fun.<\/p>\n
Luckily, we have had a very flexible definition of when an anniversary trip can take place. We headed up to New York in 2007, the last time we took one of these trips, to see a couple days of U.S. Open tennis action. Maria loves tennis, and we had a great time. I thought about repeating that trip, but then we came up with another idea.<\/p>\n
One of the tournaments preceding the Open takes place in Washington, D.C. We have never made it down for that event, the Legg Mason Tennis Classic, so we set our sights on making that our 2010 anniversary trip.<\/p>\n
We got tickets for evening sessions on Friday and Saturday, booked a hotel room and planned for a little sightseeing. Since D.C. is just about a two-hour drive from our house, it made for a nice little getaway.<\/p>\n
Details after the jump<\/p>\n
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Tennis<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Another section will focus on our public transportation experience in D.C., but let’s just say that the Fitzgerald Tennis Center at Rock Creek park is a piece of cake travel-wise. They run a free shuttle from a Metro stop that made it really easy to get back and forth.<\/p>\n The “stadium” only holds 7,500 so there isn’t a bad seat.I had made sure to get east-facing seats so we weren’t broiled by the sun at the beginning of the evening sessions, which start at 7 p.m. Good idea. We were in the upper deck in Row G (first night) and Row H (second night). The tickets were $40 and $45. If we go again, I will spring for seats in the lower level.<\/p>\n We were 12-15 rows from the top, but that didn’t stop people from jumping seats and stuff. For God’s sake, how hard is it in a small stadium with very few bad sightlines to sit in the seat you bought? Especially for a sport like tennis where you’re not supposed to be moving around a lot. It was just annoying. The problem wasn’t as bad on Saturday as it was on Friday though.<\/p>\n We also had some idiots who brought a 18-month-old. The kid banged stuff on the metal bleachers, talked non-stop and was kicking\/grabbing\/bumping into people (i.e. my wife) in the row in front of him. Get a babysitter.<\/p>\n Other than that, the event was fantastic. We saw eventual champion David Nalbandian win both nights. His three-setter in the Friday quarterfinal was really fun tennis. But since that match went so long and they had to hold the second match for TV, we ended up only watching a little of that. On Saturday, we only watched a little of the doubles match following Nalbandian’s win before heading to the hotel.<\/p>\n That’s the big difference between the Open and these events. The Open has tons of courts with matches of all styles and levels going on so the best way to watch is to get a grounds pass and roam the tennis center to find a match you like. These smaller events do have lots of matches on extra courts (this one only had four courts) earlier in the event, but don’t have as much to watch later in the week.<\/p>\n I’d still come back to the Legg Mason again, but just think the Open is more fun and a better bang for your buck.<\/p>\n