Washington D.C.'s National Cherry Blossom Festival

Posted on the 18 May 2012 by Killerfillers @killrfillr

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.