A Slice of Cherry Pie

It was the best time to be there, it was the worst time to be there. (Apologies to Charles Dickens)

We came to Washington DC to see the cherry blossoms, and indeed, it was the perfect time to see the cherry trees bloom. 

We watched as the trees started out bare, with no leaves and barely the nubs of buds. Despite optomistic newspaper predictions, we thought we had misjudged our timing.

But over the span of just one week, clusters of these tiny, fragile blossoms began appearing on the stark branches. A tree that we had not even noticed earlier in the week would be bursting with petals by the time we left.

 But we learned an important lesson.

In the north, March break is in March. In much of the States, it seems, Spring Break can be the second week of April. So, in our northern ignorance, we visited Washington, DC at the height of its tourist season.

We experienced masses of blooms and masses of people. Simultaneously.

But although we came for the cherry blossoms, we stayed for the man made attractions.

When it comes to monuments, the capital of the United States does it right.

Every day, for six days straight, we journeyed into the core of the city to see something amazing. 

Considering that we used transit each day, and that it cost us a small fortune over the week, it was a good thing that all the museums and monuments were free to the public.

We started out with the obvious. We walked the National Mall to see the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and the White House.

The Mall is just a big long park, with grass and geometrically shaped ponds. It appears to be well used by walkers, picnickers, kite flyers, and bike and segway riders.

Well used, and well loved, much like this Charlie Brown kite tree that we found along the way. 

Kites on the top, kids on the bottom. Actually, an apt description of the National Mall, too.

The Lincoln Memorial is breathtaking. Right from the moment you climb the long, long set of stairs, up to the time you see the much-larger-than-life statue of Abraham Lincoln, surrounded by his most famous speeches. 

You recover your breath just in time to go back down again. And those steps are steep going back down.

We spent a day at the Arlington Cemetery and saw the Iwo Jima Memorial, surprisingly set outside of the cemetery grounds.

Perhaps it is only proper that they saved the space for the soldiers that deserve it.

During a night tour we saw the monument of Martin Luther King, Jr.  With 2 large granite rocks framing the entrance, and the sculpture of King carved out of the matching third, it was just as impressive as if we had seen it in full light.

Then there were the building tours. The Capitol building tour was incredibly efficient, even with the other 15,000 people that toured it the same day we did. 

The 5 pubs that we checked out during the week were not nearly as crowded, but just as satisfying.

Although we stepped into four different museums of the Smithsonian complex, it was the first that was most memorable. The Air and Space Museum was packed stem to stern. It was the perfect time for the power to go out, and for the authorities to declare an evacuation of the building. It gave us time to have a drink at a pub nearby, and to return to find much more elbow room than before. They should have done that all week.

We didn’t have nearly enough time to properly view the museums. We got a taste of some, but plan to come back so that we can really savour them again at a slower pace and discover several more.

Just like the cherries. A slice is not enough when there is a whole pie to enjoy. W