Visited National Stadium this past weekend for the first time. We've been to Camden Yards previously and it is nice to have another major league team to support. My hometown in Virginia does not have major league baseball and is now losing its minor league team, so having Nationals Stadium somewhat close is great. We purchased our tickets online early in March of this year, thinking we would get to see a pretty good game, as the Nationals were ranked pretty highly last year (I think). This season hasn't worked out so well for them, however, but that's o.k. it was still fun.

We originally planned to stay overnight in DC, but my son found out he needed to work early on Sunday, so we decided to drive back. This created a little angst for me, as we weren't familiar with the parking situation around the park. I searched online for Metro stations in VA where we could park and ride to the stadium and decided that it was just too much trouble and we would wing it and see about parking at or near the stadium, knowing it wouldn't be exactly "cheap" for this convenience.

We hit I-95 at around 4:00 headed to DC for a 7:00 game between Nationals and Colorado Rockies. Ran into traffic, hopped off the interstate to hit Rt. 1, but alas, so did many others. Traffic there also. Traffic finally broke, were making pretty good time on Rt. 1, but decided to get back onto the interstate since we weren't 100% sure where we were going once we got into DC.

Let me say, it couldn't have been easier to find the ball park. Right off Interstate 395. Missed the exit I thought I was supposed to take (DH is a terrible navigator) but as luck would have it, didn't matter, we got off at the next exit and found $15.00 parking right next to the ballpark. Sweet victory.

The ball park is pretty impressive. Very clean (of course it's new), and we really liked it. Great graphics around the stadium, lots to watch, huge HD scoreboard, and lots of participation with the fans. Really nice. We found the variety of food available for purchase to be good and we quickly found what each of us wanted. The food is somewhat expensive ($29 for two hotdogs, two fries and two drinks; $17 for steak and cheese and flavored water, $11 for two ice cream cones), but we enjoyed it.

We had good seats, great folks around us to chat with and all in all a great time was had.

After the game ended, we hopped back on to I-395 (very easy to find) and were home in a little less than 2 hrs.

We've decided to try to do this again. It really is a quick drive from the Richmond area of Virginia, there was no need to worry about parking, as long as you're willing to pay, and it couldn't be easier to find.