Author Bio: About Nige
Nige is one of the co-founders of The Billingham Blog and works as a freelance management consultant. He loves to fly in his spare time!
Holiday Washington DC in Nov 2025: Day 5 – Washington DC to Charlottesville
By Nige
on November 13, 2025
at 6:01 pm
Type: Post
Story: Holiday Washington DC in Nov 2025
Category: Travel
Tags: Charlottesville | Hertz | Hilton | Holidays | USA | Washington DC
Today was driving day! After 4 cold days in Washington DC, it was time to head south for some time in Charlottesville and Shenandoah National Park.
The day started off the same as the previous few days, with an early morning visit to our local Starbucks across the road at around 4:30am.
It was relatively warm compared to previous days, so today we decided to walk around the White House again.
Due to the time we were likely to spend in the car today, we needed to take any opportunity to exercise our legs!
Our car pickup was scheduled for 8am at the Hertz counter at the Westin Hotel Downtown, just a 10 min walk away.
That gave us an opportunity of walking down to the Jefferson Memorial, which we didn’t think we had been to before.
It was a simple 1.5 mile walk down 14th Street and we got a lovely view from across the Tidal Basin.
On the way, we caught a beautiful view of the US Capitol down Pennsylvania Ave.
The sun was rising and the red glow was tremendous.
We were taken by how many joggers were out. With so much open space, it’s a joggers paradise.
When we walked the short distance to The Westin, Downtown, we found there was no Tesla Model 3 available; the one we should have taken was due back the previous day but didn’t arrive.
The guy who was standing in for the normal guy on that site, tried to fob us off with a gas car and then told us to go to the airport.
He assigned us a Nissan Sentra to take to the airport, where he suggested we may be able to exchange the Sentra for a Tesla Model 3. He said it looked like one was available at the airport.
We drove to the airport and they advised us that they haven’t used EVs for some time. They actually get their EVs from downtown.
So, Hertz: you should be ashamed of yourselves. Lying to customers is not ok.
We decided we would take a Nissan Altima and cut our losses.
We stopped off at a pleasant Starbucks in Chantilly, to clear our minds of negative thoughts.
Most of the journey was based on the I-28 South. Total distance of just over 100 miles and it took us a little less than 2 hours. Lots of police cars seen on the way.
We arrived at Homewood Suites, Charlottesville shortly before 1pm. Our suite was available.
After settling in and checking what kitchen facilities we had available, we drove out to Wholefoods Market to pick up some food for dinner over the next few days.
We spent over $140. What? At least that included two tubs of Ben & Jerry’s Strawberry Cheesecake!
We briefly walked out to find a circular walk centred around Charlotteville, before grabbing 40 winks back at the hotel.
A salad, cheese and bread/biscuits dinner was enjoyed in our room.
Tomorrow we would be hitting Shenandoah National Park, so we were looking forward to some more walking.
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