Cherry Blossom & Kite Festival

The weekend of March 29th our family took the Metro downtown to participate in the Cherry Blossom Festival. The girls were exstatic to be riding on the Metro! I figured it was going to be crowded on the metro but almost impossible to find parking.


I have never seen so many people at the Metro stations or on the Mall! I think this must have been the busiest day for the Metro line all year. When we finally got off the Metro at the Smithsonian station, we had to fight through the crowd to get to the street level. The wind was blowing outside and the Kite Festival was in full swing. Avery especially was drawn to the kites.

We made our way towards east end of the National Mall to see the cherry trees. It was more crowded than Disneyland during spring break. Fortunately, there are hundreds of cherry trees. We took some pictures around some of the closer ones and reveled in the promise of spring. Meanwhile, a cool wind kept the temperature around jacket weather.

We continued down the mall past the Washington Monument to the World War II Memorial. All the girls love waterfountains. This place has them by the dozen!

We were all a bit tired from the walking and decided to sit down and rest for a moment. Britta came up to me and directed me to open my mouth. After peering at my teeth she said in a very concerned voice, "Dad, your teeth are getting kind of yellow." Kids are so honest. I explained that it was probably time for me to visit the dentist to get my teeth cleaned and polished. Britta yelled to Stephanie, "Mom, Dad needs to go to the dentist when we get home tonight!"

We ended the day with a trip to the reflecting pool by the Lincoln Memorial to feed the ducks (sorry, no pictures). I had loaded up all our stale bread in my backpack just for this purpose. We had enough to keep the ducks, swans, and gulls? busy for about 15 minutes. We all had a great time watching the gulls dive and steal the bread from the ducks and even catch bites in the air.

The trip home was pretty uneventful, and lots less crowded. Next on our list of things to do downtown is the National Zoo!