First Day In Washington

First, I have to apologize for yesterday's post. Blogger was driving me crazy with funny spacing and so on. Hopefully, today will be better...
We started today with a decision not to try to drive into Washington. The road in front of the hotel, which goes into the city, was jammed from when we got up until we were ready to leave. So, we took the free shuttle to the subway and it ended up being the best way to go. It's a very clean and efficient subway system that we'll use for the rest of the trip.

As you can see, it's a fairly industrial looking system, but it works well. 
We are very lucky to have arrived in Washington when the cherry blossoms are blooming. In a normal year, they wouldn't be out for at least another week. With the warm winter this year, they are early. The festival is on now and they are celebrating the centennial of the trees being here. As a result, you can't turn around without running into some kind of photographer. And, it's hard to stop taking pictures of the blossoms!

After walking around the Tidal Basin, where the blossoms are, we visited both the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials.

Following that, we walked to the memorials for the Korean War, Second World War and the Vietnam War. All of them were quite moving.

By this time, we were quite hungry so we hopped on the Metro and went to the Eastern Market which I'd read about. It was supposed to be like the St. Lawrence, but it wasn't. Quite small by comparison. But, across from it there was a Salvadorean restaurant that was featured on Diners Drive Ins and Dives! The foodies out there will understand how excited we were to try it out. We had a great lunch for not much money and it was delicious. I had a pupusa plate and Marilyn had chicken breast wrap. We had sides like sweet plantain, yucca fries, black beans and salad.

As we came out of the restaurant, we noticed a ratty looking liquor store on another corner. We didn't chance going in and I really hope we don't have relatives in DC.

Our final cultural event of the day was to visit the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. Incredibly, all of the Smithsonian museums are free! I know this one was mostly for me because I'm a plane and space nerd.

Our last event of the day was dinner in Crystal City at a Spanish restaurant called Jaleo. Crystal City is a part of DC near Reagan Airport, about 10 minutes from our hotel. We had an incredible tapas meal and I bought the chef's cookbook so there will be some tapas at home in the near future. Here's what we had:

The top picture is a salad, sort of like a Nicoise, with preserved tuna, potatoes, eggs, tomatoes etc. Beside the salad are some pieces of toast with a nice tomato sauce and manchego ham. The next picture is of Iberico ham. It's like super prosciutto. Marilyn said I was in ham heaven as I was eating this. I think I said something about ambroisia. Oh, I did share! Iberico ham comes from special black pigs that only eat special acorns in a specific part of Spain. 
Then we had some serrano ham croquettes that basically melted in our mouths as we ate them. Finally, we had a type of pasta dish called Rossejat. It's made of small pieces of pasta and seafood prepared like a paella. Amazing!