Springtime. The season where everything comes back to life after a cold and dreary winter. The season where the flowers begin to bloom, the bees start to buzz, and the birds begin to chirp. For Washington, D.C. residents, it is the peak of the cherry blossom season that we most anticipate in the spring.
Months of waiting to see a sea of pink and white lining the Tidal Basin is partly what gets us through the slush that passes as snow during the winter. The cherry blossoms were gifted to the United States by Japan in 1912 to commemorate the growing and everlasting friendship between the two countries, and the annual blooming of the blossoms has been a treat for Americans ever since.
But, as college students leave their campuses, and longtime residents head out from their homes to make the trek to the Tidal Basin, they are greeted with a sea of tourists with fanny packs and cameras, rather than the pink and white flowers that they had been expecting. The trees are still there, but it becomes a hassle to enjoy their beauty. The tourists, like tulips in a garden, have sprouted up for the year, and that is how we know—tourist season has officially begun. The following is exactly why I hate this season so much:
1. The metro becomes impossible to navigate.
I work on the National Mall. I love it. When I start my shift, there is genuinely no place I’d rather be. What I don’t love? The commute. The metro is a pain, even when it is running smoothly. The red line single tracks all the time, the times on the boards never seem to match up, and I often catch myself sprinting to get on the next train when I transfer lines, or else find myself waiting 20 minutes before the next one. Now, take that anguish you feel when the metro fails you (for the umpteenth time) on a regular Monday morning, and multiply that by ten. Now, hop on the blue, silver, or orange line and head towards the Smithsonian or L’Enfant Plaza station stops. The crowds are insane. How did I know the cherry blossom season had started? From the internet? The news? Nope – I knew from the claustrophobia I felt as I scuttled past people from other states and countries as I tried to reach sunshine. I knew from the agony I felt as I waited mindlessly at Metro Center one day to switch to blue line in a huge crowd of strangers, with no trains scheduled to stop by within the next half hour. The worst part of my DC experience had gotten exponentially worse.
2. Walking? What is that?
I ditched the metro transfer point once, after realizing that it was hopeless to keep waiting for a train that would be more packed than ones on weekday mornings during rush hour. Plus, walking from Metro Center to L’Enfant Plaza is a scenic walk anyway. Except, this time—it wasn’t. People walked with even less speed than tourists do on 5th Avenue during the holiday season. The sidewalks were just as jam-packed as the underground tunnels had been, but now there was the added bonus of abrupt stops as people reached for their cameras to snap a photo of something. The closer I got to the Tidal Basin, the worse it got. Sure I saw some cherry blossoms, but I had to fight for positions by the water where I could snag some pictures of the trees. As soon as one person left, one would have to jump in and take the spot, or risk another tourist stealing it a split-second later. The experience did not feel fun. It felt arbitrary and stressful. The crowds were so bad that I did not make it to the Jefferson Memorial, I turned back around and headed away from the sightseers.
3. Am I in a parallel universe?
One day I am simply attending classes, going to work, and night-monumenting as the weather slowly warms up. The next, I am having maps of the city shoved in my face as people attempt to ask me for directions, or ignoring me when I ask them to move to the right so I can walk down the left side of the escalator, and people whacking me with their Frisbees and falling kites as I walk across the Mall. It is watching people pick the blossoms from the trees when there is a sign not three feet from them, telling them not to do so. It’s as if no one cares! The crosswalk time will run out, and some tourists still attempt to run across the intersection. There are people dipping their feet in the fountains of the FDR and World War II Memorials, and leaving their trash in the Reflecting Pool. It seems like I jumped from Point A in time to Point B without any explanation as to how I got there. It’s odd and disorienting.
But, I still love the season. I love the same Instagram photos of the same trees with the same captions and same flower emoji, the only difference being the username of the person posting it. I even love the tourists. It reminds me how lucky I am to go to school and work in the nation’s capital. It even allows me to encounter some people on the Mall I may not otherwise have ever met. And the cherry blossoms are incredibly worth it, even if they don’t seem to be at first. So, perhaps the beginnings of the tourist season aren’t as bad as we make them out to be after all.