Cherry Blossom Festival

Last week my parents, dog, and I took a quick trip to D.C. to visit the Cherry Blossom Festival. We left as soon as I got out of work on Tuesday and drove through the night to try and make it into the city before rush hour. After reading warning after warning about the nightmares of driving to the festival, I was pretty sure our only shot was to get to the tidal basin early. Neither my mom nor my dog are able to walk a long distance and the Metro doesn't allow dogs, so parking away from the Mall and commuting in wasn't an option. 

Of course, we got stuck in traffic for over an hour and didn't get into the city until after 9. Yet everything still worked out. We found a too-good-to-be-true spot next to the Jefferson Memorial, and after thoroughly reading all of the signs, realized that we could park there all day for free. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom that day, which apparently only lasts for a 3-4 days out of the three-week long festival. The weather was gorgeous. Sunny, but not too hot. We were worried about Clover doing so much walking, but she absolutely loved it. We let her walk half of the time and then one of us would carry her to give her a rest. Clover lets us carry her like a baby, and there were quite a few people who thought that was the cutest thing. Clover can be quite the ham when crowds of people are giving her attention. 

After we walked around the Tidal Basin and saw the World War II Memorial, we headed in search of food. We skipped breakfast in the hopes of saving time and finding a parking spot, but after walking around for a few hours, we were starving. And perhaps more importantly, in desperate need of coffee. I really wanted to take my parents to Founding Farmers in Foggy Bottom, a restaurant I went to several times while I was in D.C. for a seminar at the Holocaust Museum a few summers ago. It had gotten warm out by this point, though, and we really weren't sure about leaving Clover in the car. Almost serendipitously, my dad found a parking spot a couple blocks away from the restaurant that was in the shade with a breeze. It was just one of those trips where everything seemed to work out just right.