Cherry Blossom Festival...A+!

Sweet hubby and I got a chance to spend some time together and since he got a few days off work for Easter, we decided to be adventurous and go explore! We had heard about the "Cherry Blossom Festival" in DC and the news kept saying the blooms were in "peak bloom," so we decided to book the dog in the doggy hotel for the weekend and took off Saturday to DC to see what it was all about. Originally, we were going to spend the weekend there, but one day was plenty. The drive was less than two hours and then we found parking close to a metro station for only a dollar( no, neither of us had ever done public transit), bought our passes to the train, and thirty minutes later, we were in downtown DC!

I think our mouths hung open catching flies all day- it was amazing to see all the monuments and statues and symbols of freedom that we have seen on tv and in history books all of our lives, but to see them in PERSON is an entirely different thing altogether! Midway through the day our camera battery died and without a store in sight we gave up on taking any more pictures (our camera only takes a special lithium-ion battery, so it wasn't as easy as dropping into a walgreens to grab some AA's). But, while the camera was working, we got some great pictures!
Washington Monument






Jefferson Memorial...if you look really close, you can see hundreds of cherry blossom trees in the background- there were over three thousand of them in total! We later learned that the National Cherry Blossom Festival is an annual two-week event that celebrates springtime in Washington, DC as well as the 1912 gift of the cherry blossom trees and the enduring friendship between the people of the United States and Japan.









I'm not going to lie, the subway was quite...unnerving to say the least! I was literally almost in tears the first few stops- it goes SO fast and we sat in a place where we were moving backwards, so looking out made me nauseous. Joe was gracious enough to hold onto me and calm me down, but be prepared- they take awhile to get used to! By the end of the day, I was an old pro:) and very proud of us for finding our way around in a whole new city AND mastering the public transit! Quite an accomplishment if you ask me! We will definitely go back soon to see more with charged batteries in hand! The amount of people was INSANE...it felt like we fought with crowds of thousands of people all day long and walked probably ten miles or more, so maybe next time we will have to go when there's not a national festival going on! So much we still wanted to see!

Lessons learned:
1)Get ready for 45 miute lines to porta-potties that have no toilet paper or sanitizer- BRING YOUR OWN in your purse!!!
2)Hold on to the subway rails for dear life...the train comes to very sudden stops and will catapult you towards the front of the car. On a similar note: stand back from the platforms when the trains are coming in...the wind from them feels like it will knock you over!
3)Listen to the warnings on the intercom in the subway "CAUTION:If you are riding with us for the first time, you should know that our metro doors are not like elevator doors...if an arm or a leg is caught in the door, the door will not reopen like an elevator!"
4)Wear VERY comfy shoes-- i wanted to go hug the girls that looked so cute in their heels and say "God bless you honey, because your feet are going to KILL you later on!"
5)Buy a map...pronto!
6)Heed traffic cops and their whistles...people drive CRAZY and you dont want to be in the street at the wrong time!

All in all, a wonderful time, perfect weather, great day and quality time spent together, which is always a plus! If you are in the area this time next year, I would HIGHLY recommend it- pictures just do not do it justice...it's truly breathtaking to see!

Hope you had a great weekend!