Bethesda Trolley Trail

Start of the Bethesda Trolley Trail (aka North Bethesda Trail) off of Tuckerman Road.

Friday night M* and I walked five miles from Rockville into Bethesda via the Bethesda Trolley Trail (a flat path that is really a connection of a number of shorter trails through neighborhoods and over two freeways). We first did this walk by accident the previous Sunday—when we realized that we had already completed half of the walk and it would be the same distance to get into Bethesda as to turn around and return to my mom's place, we continued on knowing that we could take Metro back and hoping that my mom might be in the area to give us a ride.

View of the 270 freeway from the pedestrian bridge near the start of the trail.

On Friday, we were without a car, but invigorated by our walking/ cycling experience in Cambridge, we decided to walk to a recently well-reviewed restaurant in Bethesda. While taking Metro was an option, returning to a car dominated lifestyle has been making us feel a bit lumpish, so we were quite happy to get the exercise. As we got started a bit later than planned, instead of most of our walk being before sunset, the sun only made an appearance for the first 15 minutes of our excursion. Even without a flashlight M* and I managed to find our way along the path—it's a bit hard to escape the glow of suburbia along the trail.

Our destination—Nark Kara

We were quite hungry when we arrived at Nark Kara—a reasonably-priced, well-reviewed Thai restaurant. M* and I sensed something was wrong upon entering—there were empty tables but no one seated us or another couple for a while, diners were waiting without menus or water, exasperated glances followed servers as they frantically moved from the kitchen to the dining room. It turns out that getting seated was much faster than any other part of the dinner—water, menus, ordering, drinks (didn't come out until after our appetizer which took about 40 minutes while), food. However, the staff was so nice (we got free mango ice cream for dessert) and apologetic (our server did explain that something was wrong, but neither M* nor I could fully understand) and M* and I were in no hurry (we've gotten a bit used to the lengthier European dinner). Some people walked out, some demanded to speak to a manager, some complained loudly, some were just passive aggressive. Those who did stay long enough to receive their meal were mostly very pleased with the result. My Prik Khing was excellent—the green beans were bright green with a good crunch and the dish had a nice spice level—although it took two tries as the first was missing the kaffir lime leaves.

After over two hours in the restaurant, we walked over to the Bethesda Metro and trained it home. As it was after 10pm and it was hat/scarf/mittens weather out, we didn't even consider taking the Bethesda Trolley Trail back. I must say, getting around without a car made us feel healthier and a bit nostalgic for Cambridge.