This year, 2012, is the 100th anniversary of the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. it’s a yearly event that celebrates springtime.

It was just coincidence that we were visiting D.C over this time – though, the weather wasn’t particularly friendly to us, so the cherry blossoms weren’t at their ‘peak’, but they were plentiful and pretty-ful and I wish the rain hadn’t hit so I’d have seen the gorgeous views from the FDR Memorial across the water, like Frances and Ben did.

Yup, our friends arrived in D.C the day before we did, they had two full days before we arrived, and the weather held up pretty good for them.  Frances got some great shots of the very pretty blossoms!

Saturday morning we got up early, had breakfast (came free with our hotel room) and headed to attraction #38 of 211 attractions in Washington D.C. the Capitol.

Y’all will know that Col and I are big into Capitol buildings, we’d seen four (now five), and this, being ‘the’ Capitol of Capitols, I was very excited.

The Capitol building, is only a few minutes walk from the Capitol South Metro and, as it was a ‘special’ Capitol, we decided to join the herds of people in line and take the official tour.  The queue moved quickly, groups of twenty (or so) people, the tour is free, you can get tickets online, or you can stand in the queue with everyone else – like I say, the queue moves quickly.

We timed it just right, there was a tour starting at 11am, the tour lasts for one hour.  It starts with a video presentation about the U.S, then you get a headset before you head off around the building.

Col ended up with a headset for a DIFFERENT tour to the one we were on.  He was listening to a tour that was about five minutes ahead of ours, so he had to listen to the guide, which, given how loud it is there, was difficult!

The tour itself was disappointing, you don’t get into the Chambers (you need a pass from your representatives to get in to those), the majority of the tour is just to look at the statues and the art work around the building.  However, when you are walking around looking at them, you aren’t given any time to take pictures, to have a poke around, it’s just a walk through, ‘This is this, this is that’ etc.  I felt like I was on a power-walking journey around the D.C Capitol!

It’s a very pretty Capitol, bursting at the seams with things to see.  The recommendation from the web, is to go during the week, and, ‘drop in’ on your representative while you’re there.  Being a weekend, the place was busy, nothing was in session and the place was full of kids.

As a building, it’s seriously drenched in history, it’s the building where the President gets inaugurated, our tour guide showed us the steps that President Obama walked down on his inauguration day.  It’s amazing!

Eleven Presidents, including Truman, Kennedy, Ford, other officials and people (like the Civil rights icon Rosa Parks) have had their coffins laid here for a while to allow the nation to pay respects to them after they’ve died.

When we’d finished there, the rain had started, so, we took the secret underground tunnel (ok, it’s not a secret) across the road to the Library of Congress.

We didn’t look at a whole heck of a lot of the exhibits around here, as the place was massive, however, we did go to look at the oldest map in existence, that has America on it, as America.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but it was a very impressive map – it was interesting to see the states back then, and the names the places had etc.

After we’d taken a little walk around the Library of Congress, we got the metro to Metro centre, climbed through Macy’s and stumbled upon a pub at the side of the road for lunch.  The Laughing Man Tavern, it wasn’t great, but it went down rightly, cause we were starving! LOL!

From there, we dandered up to the next thing on our to-do list, The White House!

Ok, it’s listed as the #49 of 211 attractions in Washington, so not a huge vote in its favour and it’s insanely difficult to get inside (you have to get a tour arranged through your member of Congress or something next to impossible), but it’s definitely an inspiring, iconic and moving building to stand in front of.

We went to the South lawn first, which, has a LOT of space between the railings and the White House, but you still get a good view of the grounds.  It’s a pretty building and there were lots and lots of people hanging around the railings taking pictures, so there was a great buzz – in spite of the drizzle and miserable weather and getting glimpses of the snipers on the roof kept you grounded, that you really were at the White House and important people, really are, have been and will be, inside.

From there, we decided to take a walk, the rain wasn’t heavy, only drizzle and we decided to push on as much as we could before the big guns hit.

Our first stop was the Washington monument, unfortunately, it was closed so we couldn’t go inside for a nosy, but, that said, it’s still an impressive monument.

A hop, skip and a jump across the road will bring you to the World War II memorial and from there, a path that leads you around any number of Political memorials and monuments.

We saw the Korean War Veterans memorial, the reflection pool (which we’d been told was amazing) was closed, we saw the Lincoln memorial – which is, by all estimations, absolutely awe inspiring and everything you expect it to be (only much, much bigger!)

It was here, at old Lincoln, that the skies opened, we asked a guy at a nearby tourist stall where the nearest metro station was, and he directed us – though, he didn’t tell us just quite how far away it was, and, walking in the rain when we were already tired? Well, lets just say that I think in retrospect, we should have bought tickets for the hop-on, hop-off bus tour, just to avoid having to walk miles in the rain.  Ugh.

We eventually got back to the hotel room, cold, exhausted and soaking wet.  We decided to just call the rest of the day a wash (as it was still raining on and off) take a nap, order some room service (which, was pretty freakin’ delicious as room service goes!) watch some TV, including F1 Quali and head to bed.

Sunday was mostly unproductive, we got up late, because a certain husband was up from 3am to after 8am to watch the F1 race.  So, I let him have a lie-in.  By this stage, we’d had a chat and decided that we needed to come back to D.C for a longer stay, the two-day weekend we’d planned, so we agreed to take the rest of our trip in our stride, and not kill ourselves to try and fit stuff in to our short stay.

We had lunch in a place next to the hotel called Baileys Sports Grille, it wasn’t the best of experiences, but it was quick and semi-decent food.  After lunch, we grabbed the Metro into the city and made our merry way to the Verizon centre to see the home team, the Washington Capitals take on the Minnesota Wild (who, coincidentally had a number of our Houston Aeros on the roster).

The game itself was so much fun! I didn’t expect it – we’d been led to believe that the Caps fans were unfriendly to ‘away’ team fans and outsiders.  In actual fact, aside from some good natured ribbing with the odd home-team fan, we were accepted and had a great time.

The atmosphere in the arena was electric, the whole presentation was great, the mascot was entertaining, and, aside from the fact that the arena itself isn’t the greatest, we had a good time at the game (in spite of the loss for the Wild!)

When we hit the street, we decided to dander over to the North side of the White House to get a closer look of the place.  As we started down the hill, we bumped in to our friends Frances and Ben (with their friend Glen) and stopped for a quick chat, before heading over to the White House.

I have to say, there’s something iconic about seeing the White House at night, lit up in all it’s glory and yes, the North side is a little more ‘up close and personal’ as the grounds are shorter.  There is a larger police presence, the occasional protest with signs and again, bunches of people gathering to get holiday snap-shots, like I mentioned, there’s a great feeling standing there.

Col had a few concerns about walking around the city late at night, but my friend Danielle (who is living there at the moment) told us it’s totally fine, she’s been around the city at night with no fear at all.  Again, like I mentioned, there’s a strong police presence – even on the Metro, there’s always a cop or two walking up and down the carriages of the train.

After a quick walk around the White House, and a dander in the moonlight we quickly figured out that there aren’t many places around that part of town, open, to eat food, late at night on a Sunday evening.  So, after a quick text to my girl Danielle, we were hot-footing it on the Metro to Dupont Circle.

This is a place I’d heard referenced on our favourite show, The West Wing, so, I have to say, I was pretty curious about it.  I know, it’s not a tourist hot-spot, it’s more where the working people of D.C go to eat, drink and be merry, but it was a recommended place for us to find food at 10pm on a Sunday evening, so there we went!

We were surrounded by places to eat, for being so late on a ‘school night’, I was surprised to find it so bustling and busy.  With so many places around to eat, we weren’t sure which one to choose.  So, we did what any savvy traveller would do, and that’s hit-up Trip Advisor.

We discovered that one of the restaurants close to us, Kramerbooks and Afterwords Cafe, was ranked 74th out of 1,301 restaurants in Washington D.C – which was a large swaying factor.  We decided to eat here – and we weren’t disappointed.

It was delicious!

We enjoyed a fantastic three course meal, and, if we’d wanted to, we could have gone shopping for books when we’d finished, as the book-shop was open late at night as well.  It was the perfect end to a nice dander around Washington, D.C.

Monday morning we headed to the airport, had a TGI Friday’s for lunch before hopping the plane home to sunny Houston, Texas!