Cherry Blossoms, Kites, and more...

Originally published at Kenya Allmond: In My Own Words. You can comment here or there.

Even though I've been in the DC area for more than 10 years, I have never gone down by the Tidal Basin to see the cherry blossoms. I've been to the Cherry Blossom Parade (in 1995) and I've also been stuck in traffic for hours on multiple occasions near the Tidal Basin due to the Cherry Blossom Festival and "seen" the cherry blossoms before but I've never gone down there specifically to see the
cherry blossoms.

Yesterday we drove down to East Potomac Park because I heard that we could park at Hains Point and take a free shuttle to the Tidal Basin. No such luck. I ended up instead parking my car at work and we caught the metro. That was certainly an experience. When we got off at the Smithsonian station we were the midst of wall to wall people (seriously). There was nowhere you could go or be where you weren't touching some stranger. It was similar to the time I got caught up in the aftermath of the immigration protests in 2006. We were only moving a few inches at a time to get off the platform and out of the station. (I got video but haven't looked at it yet.)

When we finally got out of the station we caught some of the kite festival. It was kind of dreary and very chilly but the cherry blossoms were lovely. Most pictures I have seen of them don't do them justice. Because they are so pale they tend to be washed out on photos. I was disturbed by the folks who were accosting the trees and breaking off flowers and pulling down branches to pose with them. I have never seen anything like that and now understand why there are signs at the botanical gardens saying not to touch the flowers.

The crowds were crazy too and I probably won't be going to see the blossoms next year. I continue to be amazed at how inconsiderate some people are. This dude bumped into me and looked at me like it was my fault that he bumped into me. I was just standing there composing a shot. Also, while I was trying to compose my shot of the BF, three or four people walked into the shot behind him. The funny thing was he was standing pretty close to the edge of the water so if he had suddenly turned around certainly they would have taken an unexpected swim.

We stopped by the World War II Memorial as well. We had been meaning to go since it was completed. We didn't spend as much time there as I would have liked and will have to go back when it's less crowded.

The sun finally did show up and even though I had been annoyed earlier I was glad that we went.

See the photos on Flickr.