This weekend saw the annual explosion of white and pink around the Tidal Basin and National Mall – blooming of the Cherry Blossoms. We when down on Friday evening, which was a good plan because it avoided most of the tourists that flock to the city for this weekend. I would say it was mostly locals roaming the mall.

It actually a pleasant evening, so it was nice to get around without having to be bundled up. I also got a nice sunset shot with the Washington Memorial.

I tried to get a few good shots of the Lincoln Memorial and WWII memorial, but I only brought my dinky mini-tripod and didn’t have a remote, so they didn’t come out that great (Make sure your gamma is set correctly if you have an LCD screen! The colors should be dark and deep).

Saturday morning Ann headed downtown to meet with a fellow GSB admit, and I decided to come down and join after lunch. The tourists had descended on the Mall for the official Cherry Blossom festival that featured a kite festival (among other things).

It was quite an amazing sight and unfortunately the picture doesn’t really do it justice. While not quite the population that usually descends for 4th of July, it was still quite large crowd. After making another round around the Mall, we headed back. I’ll post a few other pictures this week.