DC: National Christmas Tree 2012

If you are at all familiar with our trek to see the National Christmas Tree last year, you will understand why we were a little hesitant to go this year. I managed to convince Eric that we were already basically going to be there after going to Zoo Lights, and the tree was different this year! Surely it would be much better than last year! I had seen it from afar after going to the Capitol Christmas Tree Lighting, and to me it looked a lot better. I also wanted to see the tree at night, since we didn't do that last year.

Well, the tree itself was nice looking, but the lights are just no good, in our opinion. We realize that it's way easier to put net lighting over such a tall tree...but...net lighting just doesn't look very good!

We also had an annoying experience getting to the tree. There is only one entrance, and everything else is fenced off. So we parked on the completely wrong side (on the west side of the White House, on G St, there is street parking) and had to walk over 30 minutes just to get to the entrance. It was frustrating, to say the least. (Last year we were coming from the other, correct, side, so we didn't notice this.) So if you're going to the tree, make sure you are approaching it from the east (i.e. from the National Mall), or else you will have to walk around the whole entire site just to get to the one entrance.