We were having dinner in New York with our friend Melissa on Thursday night when she happened to mention how beautiful the cherry blossoms were in Washington at present.
Now regular readers of this blog may remember I went a little Sakura-crazy in Tokyo last year when we were there at the tail end of cherry blossom season, so after we’d farewelled Melissa I was straight online checking it out.
When I saw Saturday was the predicted optimal day of the season, beautiful weather was forecast, & it was one of the only days we didn’t have anything booked or planned in New York, there was only one option. Book those train tickets, & let the rest of the family know we were Washington bound!
While Sascha and I had been in Washington relatively recently for the Girl Up Summit, it was Sam’s first time there and Stuart hadn’t been back since his visit on a boys road trip across the US way before my time so they were keen to see all of the well known landmarks. I wasn’t overly keen on distractions from the focus on cherry blossom, but it turned out Washington had obliged nicely by planting cherry trees at pretty much all of the major sightseeing points.
Unsurprisingly given the stunning weather, the start of spring break, and the cherry blossom festival the city was absolutely packed.
Thank goodness for Dexter, our driver for the day who knew all sorts of back roads and short cuts to get us out of the gridlocked traffic near all of the major locations.
We finished the day at the Tidal Basin, walking the full way around it and, despite the thousands and thousands of others doing the same, 
I got some absolutely beautiful pictures that almost make it look like we were the only ones there. 
It was a tired little touring party who boarded the train back to New York, with everyone’s daily step goals blown out of the water, our/my cherry blossom obsession satisfied for another year, and everyone keen for a return family trip to Washington to do all the things we didn’t have time to do today.
(Some more pics below, because I literally took hundreds and they’re too beautiful just to sit on my phone)
