National Cherry Blossom Festival
The National Cherry Blossom Festival occurs every year to celebrate the annual blooming of more than 3,000 cherry trees in the Washington area, originally donated to the city as a gift from mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo in 1912. Today, an entire month of events is planned around the event, including a parade, art exhibitions, bike rides, fireworks, and races. Of course, this is also one of the times when the area is most packed with tourists, with an estimated 700,000 visitors flooding the city each year. The event takes place over a couple of weeks at the end of March and the beginning of April.
This annual event will give you a hint of what the Arlington area has to offer in the way of culinary delights. It takes place towards the end of May in the Ballston area of the city. Area restaurants set up booths and you can walk from booth to booth sampling whatever the vendors have prepared. There is no admission fee to the event, but to eat you must buy a booklet of tickets. Each booklet contains 6 tickets, cost around $25 (discounts for advanced purchases) and food items cost one ticket each. There is also other entertainment on site, like live bands.