Cherry Blossom Festival

While in Delaware we made a day trip to D.C. so that we could see the cherry blossoms.  I have always wanted to see this, and we really lucked out with our timing. According to the "cherry blossom watch" website,  the trees are only in "peak" for a few days and start looking pretty shabby after about a week.  The window in which one can see them in their full glory is narrow.  The "peak" was predicted to be about a week and a half before our trip, but a last minute cold snap turned things in our favor.  The "peak" was on Saturday and we visited on Wednesday, so the trees were still beautiful.  We could not have picked a better day to visit.  It was sunny and cool.  We parked near the Air and Space Museum and then walked toward the tidal basin.  The Cherry Blossom Festival was taking place so there was a band playing near the basin.  It was beautiful.  Even the kids- who had been complaining all morning that their mom was "making them go see flowers" and that "this was going to be lame"- were in awe of how beautiful it was.

We ended up walking all the way around the tidal basin.  We even stopped to rent some paddleboats and peddled around the basin for about twenty minutes.  While we were on the lake four helicopters flew over us followed by Marine One.  That was pretty cool.

Other than popping in the food court at the Air and Space Museum, we didn't do any of the museums on this visit.  Instead we did tons of walking and visited lots of memorials- some of which we had never been to before.  Some of these "new" memorials were those honoring Jefferson, FDR, and MLK.  We also walked all of the way to the White House.  We have seen it from a distance every time that we've been in D.C., but the kids wanted to get a closer view so we trudged all the way down to Pennsylvania Avenue.  With all of the walking we did, we were beat by the end of the day.  This was the most beautiful that I'd ever seen the mall, so I'm glad that we visited.