Game Sunday.. Hotels? Crystal City?

I would suggest Ballston/Clarendon/Rosslyn, Crystal City is pretty remote. The orange line to the blue line (Morgan Blvd) on the metro is a safe bet. Also Uber offers specials for the games. I live in Arlington and am a season tickets holder, trust me there is no easy way to get to the stadium.

you can prepurchase a smartpass online and preload it with money, or add money to it at any station (because of the numbers during a game, i'd suggest doing it beforehand, either online or in person).

you can also do a day pass (lasts till 3am on fri or sat), but that's probably not worth it (when they were $5 forever ago, they were).

it is a mile walk, but MTA is pretty good about matching service to expected volume, so getting back towards where ever you're going isn't too bad. the parking lots are always a pain, they didn't design fed ex field's parking/highway access right, so it can take hours to get out of there if you park. it's bad enough that a bunch of people leave at the beginning of the 4th to avoid as much of it as possible.

parking or metro are both more painful than they need to be, but that's due to bad logistical design by the team/county.

I'm not against the walk to the Morgan Blvd station since its a day game unless it's raining. I refuse to leave a game early. If anything I tend to stay late to let the traffic clear out a little. I do like the idea of not sitting in traffic for 2 hours if I can avoid it, especially if parking is going to be $40 or more.. In Philly, I think parking was $20 in the stadium lots and I got valet parking 10 feet from the gate at Fenway for $35 so I just can't grasp $40-$50 for basic parking a half mile away.

Probably not doing much in terms of nightlife on this trip. Really more of the memorials and museums on Sat and the game Sunday. I did consider the Le Meridien which I think is in the Rossyln area but it looks like if we stay in the Pentagon area we could do the Blue Line Rail from there to Morgan Blvd pretty easy, no? Is there a difference in the quality of the two areas?

Tbh, if night life isnt an issue, you can stay farther south in Virginia. Take the VRE into DC and catch Metro from there. It makes it easier to head south when you leave the area as Springfield and north can be a massive headache traffic wise. You can look in the Woodbridge, Stafford, or Fredericksburg area. All three are right on I95 and are less populated than getting inside the beltway.

Stub hub has Green lot passes at $100.. God help us if we get back to 10 win seasons.. I hope the eventual new stadium has a much better parking/metro situation..