Due to the limited time to explore places in the US when I went there last February, I made sure that all weekends were spent wisely. Thanks to the bang for the buck Chinatown bus in New York we were able to witness the Centennial National Cherry Blossom Festival in DC last March.
It was a 4-hours scenic bus ride passing by states of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Washington D.C. Upon reaching DC’s Chinatown, we were then picked up by our friend to get us to our hotel in Georgetown. Gazing thru the car window, I already imagined myself walking amongst the cherry blossoms lined up in Tidal Basin extending to the Jefferson Memorial but the weather wasn’t so cooperative – it was a dreary rainy weekend.
Held annually the festival commemorates the 1912 gift of 3,000 cherry trees from Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo to the city of Washington, honoring the lasting friendship between the United States and Japan and celebrating the continued close relationship between the two cultures.
In a simple ceremony on March 27, 1912, First Lady Helen Herron Taft and Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted the first two trees from Japan on the north bank of the Tidal Basin in West Potomac Park. In 1915, the United States Government reciprocated with a gift of flowering dogwood trees to the people of Japan. A group of American school children reenacted the initial planting in 1927 and the first "festival” was held in 1935, sponsored by civic groups in the Nation’s Capital." For more details, visit the festival’s official site.
Enduring the drizzle and cold weather, we started our sojourn in the Tidal Basin. Seeing those nice white and pink colors were truly a marvelous sight as DC is awash in pink and white ambrosial bliss. We got lucky as we happened to pick the weekend of peak bloom.
The place gets extremely crammed as people poured in to enjoy the festival by biking around,or taking a river tour or families and friends snapped photos of each other and the imposing monuments around. It is a great feeling to walk around this area and be able to enjoy the cold breeze which blows the tiny pink petals all over you.
Even with the terrible traffic, hard to find parking, rainy weather and big crowd going to the festival is still worth checking out. I enjoyed the experience of being in awe of the gorgeous cherry blossom.
