West Springfield

I grew up in Essex County, NJ and am having a similar experience in Falls Church city to what I loved growing up … walkable, friendly, great schools. Also recommend you look at Vienna. Good luck with your move!

OP here. Thanks for the feedback, even the snarky ones.

1. We're in Palo Alto. You can absolutely walk to the grocery store, the park and the library in 15 minutes or less. It's a wonderful place to live. Your friends were lazy.

2. We're moving to be closer to our aging parents and other close family. You're right, the Bay Area is nicer in a lot of ways.

3. Our family loves the DMV. They do go to the monuments and museums, enjoy the trails and parks, and think the food scene is pretty good for not being New York City. Not sure why everyone here seems to hate on it so much.

Pimmit Hills

Bethesda with Walt Whitman if you want excrement public schools

Bethesda walking distance metro if you want pretty good schools with walking distance everything.

Fairfax county sucks my soul dry as an ex NYC person.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I highly recommend Annandale or anything in the Justice pyramid

Hahaha. That gave me a good, laugh out loud laugh!

Typical, trashing schools you know nothing about.

“ Here in the Bay Area, we're lucky enough to be able to walk to school, the public library, the grocery store, neighborhood parks,”

Wut? I lived in Burlingame for years and had many friends in San Francisco, San Jose, Berkeley, Mountain View, Palo Alto, etc, and nobody walked to anything, get outta here with this nonsense.

Westover in Arlington.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up MD and moved to Vienna 13 years ago. We looked at Bethesda but fell in love with Vienna for the community, schools, recreational options, and relatively lower housing costs. Check out the Town of Vienna website for all of the activities from Viva Vienna to Chillin' on Church. These events bring out the families. Also, for a small town, there are surprisingly a lot of good non-franchised restaurants.

Within the Town of Vienna, it is very walkable especially now that the town is installing more sidewalks thanks to the generous donation from a long-time town resident. When my daughter was younger, she walked to Vienna ES and then to the Rec Center next door for after school activities. Now she walks to her MS and we drive her to after school sports/activities that are 5-10 mins away. The HS we're zoned to is less than 10 mins' drive. We find that most of the places that we need to visit regularly are around Vienna.

Traffic on Maple Ave, the main street that cuts through Vienna is bad during rush hour but most of the residents know how to avoid this.

For $2M, you can get a new custom built SFH with a nice yard. Your budget will go further here than McLean or Bethesda.

It's not just residents, but others, who have identified (or whose apps have identified) the potential short-cuts, and all it means is that some residential streets end up with the same horrible traffic as Maple Avenue. Traffic in Vienna is really bad.

Traffic is bad in Vienna, but traffic is bad in most of the most desirable walkable areas throughout the DMV, be it Vienna, Falls Church City, Ballston, Clarendon, Bethesda, or anywhere in DC.

If it’s a place people want to go, traffic will more than likely be painful.

Anonymous wrote:I grew up MD and moved to Vienna 13 years ago. We looked at Bethesda but fell in love with Vienna for the community, schools, recreational options, and relatively lower housing costs. Check out the Town of Vienna website for all of the activities from Viva Vienna to Chillin' on Church. These events bring out the families. Also, for a small town, there are surprisingly a lot of good non-franchised restaurants.

Within the Town of Vienna, it is very walkable especially now that the town is installing more sidewalks thanks to the generous donation from a long-time town resident. When my daughter was younger, she walked to Vienna ES and then to the Rec Center next door for after school activities. Now she walks to her MS and we drive her to after school sports/activities that are 5-10 mins away. The HS we're zoned to is less than 10 mins' drive. We find that most of the places that we need to visit regularly are around Vienna.

Traffic on Maple Ave, the main street that cuts through Vienna is bad during rush hour but most of the residents know how to avoid this.

For $2M, you can get a new custom built SFH with a nice yard. Your budget will go further here than McLean or Bethesda.

It's not just residents, but others, who have identified (or whose apps have identified) the potential short-cuts, and all it means is that some residential streets end up with the same horrible traffic as Maple Avenue. Traffic in Vienna is really bad.

Anonymous wrote:You're both work from home and are moving from SF to the DMV for.... what? DC is alright, but as someone who moved from the bay area (For an in-office job), I wouldn't trade locations if I didn't have to. It sounds like you already have a lot of what you want walkability-wise in/near one of the country's most gorgeous cities.

Gotta be family or access to some specific institution like a University. No one would move here just to move here. You'd have to be insane.

I grew up MD and moved to Vienna 13 years ago. We looked at Bethesda but fell in love with Vienna for the community, schools, recreational options, and relatively lower housing costs. Check out the Town of Vienna website for all of the activities from Viva Vienna to Chillin' on Church. These events bring out the families. Also, for a small town, there are surprisingly a lot of good non-franchised restaurants.

Within the Town of Vienna, it is very walkable especially now that the town is installing more sidewalks thanks to the generous donation from a long-time town resident. When my daughter was younger, she walked to Vienna ES and then to the Rec Center next door for after school activities. Now she walks to her MS and we drive her to after school sports/activities that are 5-10 mins away. The HS we're zoned to is less than 10 mins' drive. We find that most of the places that we need to visit regularly are around Vienna.

Traffic on Maple Ave, the main street that cuts through Vienna is bad during rush hour but most of the residents know how to avoid this.

For $2M, you can get a new custom built SFH with a nice yard. Your budget will go further here than McLean or Bethesda.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So you both WFH??
And it doesn't sound like a commute to anywhere in the region is a factor, right?

Why move here? Why not to a lower COLA area?

+1. Northeast to DMV can be a big change, culturally, OP (hint: ask others who have actually done so).

I did this from north Jersey. It was basically no change at all. Same type of people, same politics, etc. Other than getting rid of the township system and its enormous inefficiencies as a bonus, nothing is much different at all. North Jersey to central Alabama is different. NOVA is certainly not.

Still apples and oranges between NOVA and north Jersey towns which, for the most part, have a walkable, charming downtown near a NJT station. I’ve found this does not exist in NOVA.

You're both work from home and are moving from SF to the DMV for.... what? DC is alright, but as someone who moved from the bay area (For an in-office job), I wouldn't trade locations if I didn't have to. It sounds like you already have a lot of what you want walkability-wise in/near one of the country's most gorgeous cities.

One Town is dense and overrated. A bunch of overpriced dumpy townhouses. Plus it’s not on Fairfax.