A Dream That Happened

It’s rare that the reality of a dream exceeds the dream itself. However, as my friend and I slowly paddled around the Tidal Basin yesterday on our little boat, grazing on goat cheese and dark chocolate and downing a bottle of chilled Sauvignon Blanc, the perfection of the day clearly eclipsed my original dream.

I can’t even remember when I came up with the idea of relaxing in a springtime paddle boat with a bottle of wine. When I first mentioned it to my friend, her initial reaction indicated that this would probably get added to a list of things to do some day, but it might never happen. However, somehow the recent beautiful crisp bright spring weather forced our boat trip to the top of the list and we picked a date.

When we reached the Tidal Basin, we looked with dismay at the beautiful sparkling water that did not contain even one paddle boat. After all the anticipation, would this be just one more security measure – discontinue the rental of paddle boats? But, no, as it turns out, they were renting boats – it was more like the entire Tidal Basin had been reserved just for us.

In need of a bathroom, we walked around to the Jefferson Memorial. We felt drawn to walk the rest of the perimeter, noticing the Buddhist monks taking pictures of each other, noticing a myriad of adorable baby ducklings following close behind their mothers, and noticing Splendida, the shimmering dragon that lay across the water’s surface.

The boat experience itself was almost like the dessert course. We truly looked dorky in our oversize bright orange life jackets. It was such a feeling of freedom to slowly glide through the water with no particular place to go. We drifted in the middle as we finished our snacks and drained the wine bottle, feeding a few drops to Splendida.

By the hour’s end we had viewed the monuments from various angles, visited the baby ducklings, and had our fill of paddling around in circles. It was time to plan our next excursion and paddle back to the dock.

This was a dream come trueR!