Cherry Blossom Weekend in DC
This weekend was the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC. It reminds me of fall in New England when all the leaf-peepers from New Jersey drive up too see the fall foliage. My parents decided to visit several months ago and it just happened to coincide with the Cherry Blossom events.
Saturday morning we headed into the District for the Cherry Blossom Parade. As expected, it was a mob scene. We found a spot right at the beginning of the route. We were about 5 meters back from the parade route, but on an elevated patch of grass so we could see the parade go by. The weather wasn’t too cold but it was very windy which made it seem colder than it was. Some of the parade participants were putting all their weight into keeping some tall flags standing up straight. I’m sure by the end of the parade they were exhausted.
We watched the parade from this location for about 20 minutes but, you’ve seen one parade, you’ve kind of seen them all. We walked back through the staging area which was actually a much better viewing location because there weren’t many people, but many of the bands/dancers/etc. were playing/performing – probably to keep warm with the wind chill. We continued on to the Museum of American History. Since re-opening in November, the lines for the Star Spangled Banner and First Lady exhibits were always too long. Now, however, with everyone down watching the parade the lines were pretty short. I’m not a dress person, but I thought the First Lady exhibit would have more than only a handful of dresses (especially with the long lines I had seen previously). If you’re at this museum and the First Lady line is down the hall, I would just skip it.
Next we headed over to Eastern Market to eat at the one restaurant inside the covered part of the market. The line there was over an hour. Katie loves the food so we waited, but not without me spending most of the time complaining and being a general nuisance. Apparently they are known for their breakfast, but we missed the breakfast menu by about 10min.
After lunch we stopped in at the National Gallery of Art. We went to two of the exhibitions – Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age and Robert Frank’s The Americans photography exhibit. The Dutch cityscapes were amazing. I highly recommend it for anyone visiting DC through May 3rd.
By this time we were exhausted and headed home. Saturday night we took it easy and watched Slumdog Millionaire which we had from Netflix. It was nice to watch an Indian movie that wasn’t full of dancing and singing.
Sunday we hit the International Spy Museum. It’s really more the history of spying than anything current but was still quite good. I wanted to hit at least one museum that charged admission while my parents were in town who would pay for the tickets). After the Spy Museum we went down to the tidal basin to see all the cherry blossoms. Most of DC also had the same idea. The basin was chock-‘o-block full of people. We snapped a few pictures of the cherry blossoms and walked to the Jefferson Memorial. To avoid walking back through the crowd we took the bike path back to our apartment – a ~2.5 mile walk.
Basically I was able to put a checkmark next to “See Cherry Blossoms” on my list of things to do in DC.
