Parents' office buildings may not be an ideal place to spend the night, but for some students attending the inauguration, they were the way to go.
Although hotels in Washington, D.C. and the city's surrounding suburbs were completely booked for yesterday's inauguration, students who traveled to the inauguration managed to find other, less-costly places to stay.
Some residents of the Washington area offered to rent out their homes for extremely high prices.
But rather than spend all their money on housing, many students stayed for free in the houses and apartments of friends who live in the District and the surrounding suburbs.
Engineering sophomore Evan Hyde was just one of many students who stayed at a friend's house the night before the inauguration.
He was invited by the family of 34th Street photo editor and College sophomore Thomas Jansen to stay at their home, which is an hour's walk from the White House.
College sophomore Hannah Connor, who lives in Friendship Heights in Washington, D.C., invited four of her friends to stay at her home for the inauguration.
Although Connor and her friends slept at her parents' house, she said she knew a few students who live in the area even slept at their parents' offices downtown so they could avoid inauguration traffic.
College freshman Rosie Brown, who lives in the suburbs outside Washington, also invited two of her friends from Penn to stay with her the night before the inauguration.
But living outside the city meant that she and her friends had to wake up early in the morning to get downtown in time for the inauguration festivities.
"We got to the Metro around 3:45 [a.m.] and [the Metro] opened around 4:00 [a.m.]," Brown said. "It was packed, but it wasn't as full as it could have been had we gotten on in the District."
Students also stayed in dorms with friends from other colleges in the Washington area such as George Washington University, Georgetown University and American University.
And some students didn't need to worry about housing at all - both the Penn Democrats and the students traveling on the bus chartered by the Vice Provost for University Life, the Undergraduate Assembly and the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly left Philadelphia early yesterday morning and returned late last night.
