Parents' visit: Part 1

My parents visited for Easter and for the National Cherry Blossom Festival. I dragged them all over the area to see some of the sights. I don't have any better way to break this up than by day, even though I know that's not very exciting. However, I'm going to break it up into separate posts so it will continue post while I start my next set of tourist adventures in the next few days.

Thursday
When they got to D.C., they stopped at my office for a tour of the lovely place. They also happened to hit there at the same time as we were having a retirement party for a co-worker at the end of the day, so there was pretty much no work going on and there were plenty of treats.

Then, we went to the Holy Thursday service at my church in Silver Spring. The priests tend to be long-winded. And it was Holy Thursday. And it was a multilingual service. So, two hours later we finished and headed to Quarry House, Silver Spring's famous dive bar, for some beer, burgers and tater tots with Old Bay. (Dad had never heard of Old Bay before.)

Friday
We headed straight to the Tidal Basin in hopes of seeing the blossoms before the weekend crowds hit. A stroll around the basin, stops at the Jefferson Memorial and FDR Memorial, and lots of photos.

Next, we walked across the Potomac to Arlington National Cemetery, where we gladly hopped on a tram to explore that area. We saw the Kennedy family graves as well as the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

We stopped at the National Gallery of Art briefly and did a quick tour of a few of the galleries including a large dose of early Italian (that is, basically all religious) paintings for Good Friday. Then, most of the museums were closing so we stopped at the American Art Museum and Portrait Gallery (one of the few open till 7 p.m.) before heading to get some food at Vapiano. My dad decided he loved the place – and found out they are opening locations in Dallas and Chicago soon. (And, the Italian restaurant and bar was founded in Germany.)

See more photos from the visit in my Spring Album.