IPM

Plan to relocate to Washington DC later this year and would appreciate views on the following:

1. Do I need to bother with getting a local drivers license or is a UK license fine? A skim of the DoT site suggests that this is not a requirement.

2. Recommendations from ex-pats for good pre-schools in either the Georgetown, AU Park or Pallisades areas. This is for our 3-year old daughter. We have heard good things about NCRC, but it is quite expensive.

Many thanks

lisa67

According to this :

http://dmv.dc.gov/info/NewDistrictResidents.shtm

you need to get a DC driving license if you are planning on living in DC for 30 days or more.

Can;t help with the nursery question...sorry!

penguinsix

Take a look at this site:

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/forums/list.page

It's the DC Urban Mom's site and they have forums on specific day cares, pediatricians, etc. Really a great resource.

You should also get a US license. The US DOT site is irrelevant as all the requirements are local for driving. Here is the DC requirements for international driving licenses

http://dmv.washingtondc.gov/serv/dli...n_convert.shtm

There are many facets of driving and while you may be able to say rent a car with a UK license you'll have problems buying, titling, insuring and parking that car in DC without a DC license. For example, it's worth noting that in DC many street parking spots are reserved for residents and to get a resident sticker you need a DC tag and to get a DC tag you need a DC license, etc. etc.

Unless you are on a diplomatic posting?

Do you have a place picked out just yet? Georgetown is extremely expensive, especially if you want a car and a parking space off the street.

buckers

Hi

Sorry cant help with the schools, we live in Ashburn which is about 30 mins from DC, however car wise we went through the torture of the DMV last month. Things to note

1. You will have to retake a driving test, sight test and written test (computerised now) no matter how long you have been driving in the UK (i had been driving for just under 20 years) but these can all be done in 1 day and will take about 3 hours in total dependant on how many inspectors are there and how busy it is - just be prepared to wait is all i can say.
2. You cant take a driving test on your rental car, you will need to purchase a car first, or use a friends etc
3. You will need to provide all sorts of evidence as to who you are such as property insurance , your visa, passport, bank statements etc (car insurance is not sufficient) so its worth checking before you go to do your test as you will be turned away if you dont have it all

I had a really nice lady take me for my test and it lasted about 10 minutes in all so you shouldnt worry about it, but its worth reading up the different laws and you can do as many online tests as you want on the DMV website to get you up to speed.

Good luck with it all, nobody likes going to the DMV....now i know why ha ha

IPM

Very useful, thanks. I presume, therefore, that you don't need a local license to actually buy or lease a car - a cheque book will suffice?

buckers

Hi

We just used our visa to rent a car. For buying you can pay either the whole lot or the deposit by cheque but for us, it had to be from a bank account in the US (which we had) but i am not sure if it was just with the dealer we went with or thats the rule. Not sure on leasing cars, as we bought ours, but unless you are buying a car outright then be prepared to pay a princely sum on any loan you get. We bought our car from Carmax. Good thing about buying fromthere is that they will get a car from any car max (within 250 miles) for nothing for you to view, and the price is all in - registration the lot, so you can just walk away with the car (obviously aslong as you already have insurance). Bad things is there is no room to haggle so you may find you pay over the odds sometimes, but as this was our first car we really didnt want to go through any further dealings with the DMV ha ha.

Hope this helps

penguinsix

You'll find buying the car isn't half as hard (or as expensive) as getting the insurance for the car. There are dozens of threads on here about it, but expect to pay through the nose for car insurance.