What Tourists Call the Metro Stops

Photo courtesy of
‘Monolith2_2’
courtesy of ‘haddensavix’

Yep, you know it now from your daily commute — it’s springtime for sure, because tourists are in full bloom. And they’re making some funny interpretations of Metro stop names. There’s the Garden Collection — Rose-lyn and National Ar-chives — plus speculation over what “Rockville” must look like.

Yesterday I boarded a train full of schoolkids in matching “DC 2010” t-shirts, with one little boy who just couldn’t get over the name “Foggy Bottom.” He read it off the map, laughing out loud: “Fa-ha! ha! ha!-gy Bottom!”

Let’s face it; he’s got a point. Now that Shannon has busted the myth that DC was built on a swamp, there’s really nothing else to do with that name but reconnect with your inner 10-year-old and laugh.

So what have you heard folks calling the Metro stops?

An area resident since 1997, Donna C. is a DC outsider. When she’s not running her writing and Web business, she’s running around the city, exploring the great outdoors, or trying to figure out how best to go green. See why she loves DC.

10 thoughts on “What Tourists Call the Metro Stops

  1. We’ve all probably heard about switching to another color train at the elephant (L’enfant). I still laugh every time, though.

  2. Even the train drivers can’t pronounce Grosvenor.

    Oh, and don’t forget the yellow line driver who needs to pronounce…every….syllable. Hunt-ing-ton!

  3. My fairly-recent transplant-to-DC roommate still calls it “Gallery Pie” because when he first moved here the sign clearly said “Gallery-Pl / Chinatown” and to him it look liked pie.

  4. As hinted at here in the comments posted prior to mine, the drivers can be more appalling at their pronunciations than tourists. I can give tourists a break, not train drivers.

    Is it “Ju-dish-aree” Square, or “Ju-dish-ee-aree” Square? Come on, folks.

  5. I heard someone ask a stranger “How many stops until the Roswell (Rosslyn) Station?”..talk about coming from out of town…LOL!

  6. Steve, for the first year or so I lived in D.C., I thought of that station as was Gallery P.I. — yeah, like Magnum P.I.

  7. I still call the end of the Orange Line Vanilla-Fairfax, even though the Fairfax part got cut. Vanilla tastes better than Vienna, I think.

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