Princess Parade 2009

For the third straight year, Ayako and I visited the Princess Parade (& festival) in our local town. It was a cloudy & cool day but we could still rode our bicycles there. Just by our house, there is a small playground where the cherry tree was in full bloom and so we could get a nice picture of it:
On the way to the festival, there was a pretty peach tree that was also in bloom:
Here's a shot across the river looking at the main festival area with the cherry blossom walking path behind it:
And here are some photos on the walking path with cherry blossoms making a wonderful canopy over the path:


And here's a close-up of some sakura flowers (cherry blossoms):
We had a little picnic while we waited for the parade to come by our area:
And finally the parade came by:
Here's a picture of this year's princess dressed in orange:
I don't think she's as pretty as the princess from two years ago but at least she's much prettier than last year's princess. We had hoped to ride our bicycles around town so we could watch some more of the parade but it started raining and so we headed home early. Oh well, at least we could get to enjoy most of the festival before the rain came.