World Hum contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.

Julia Ross
April in Washington, D.C., means two things: tourists and cherry blossoms. Like many locals, I avoid the picture-postcard Tidal Basin like the plague this time of year—it’s wall-to-wall people—in favor of a suburban Maryland neighborhood called Kenwood. The enclave of multi-million dollar homes is dense with Yoshino cherry trees, and the streets this week were framed with soft arcs of pink popcorn-like blossoms. Japanese tourists have long known about the neighborhood and arrive in droves on the weekend, Nikons at the ready, but on a weekday afternoon, there’s no better place to welcome springtime in Washington, relatively untrampled.

Michael Yessis
Chalk this one up to the power of low expectations: I picked up a copy of US Airways magazine this morning on my flight to New Orleans believing that, as usual for an in flight publication, I’d find little of interest. Yet there on page 76 of the April issue was an interview with one of my favorite writers, Carl Hiaasen. He talks mostly about his new book, The Downhill Lie.

Eva Holland
The owner of my hometown heroes, the Ottawa Senators, also owns a bar on the south coast of Barbados, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before he decided to fly 200 lucky fans out to the Eastern Caribbean for a few nights of rum and hockey. On Thursday night I made it onto “the list” and spent an evening watching worlds collide: local barstaff in “Hockey Night in Barbados” T-shirts dancing to soca music, pasty tourists in custom-made Senators aloha shirts screaming at flat-screen TVs below swaying palms and stars, and the local Banks beer and grilled flying fish served all around.

Joanna Kakissis
I’ve been in Edinburgh this week, entranced by the four-seasons-in-one-day weather, the scones with clotted cream, the architecture and the buskers in kilts playing bagpipes. I was here in 2005 for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, when the city was ridiculously crowd-packed, so I’m glad to see it now in all its low-key glory. The only downside: Everything costs twice as much as it did back then, when the dollar was not in cardiac arrest. The scones and vegetarian haggis are worth it, though.

Jim Benning
I arrived in New Orleans last night and and spent a couple of hours strolling around the French Quarter, enjoying a balmy evening, wailing trumpets and the sight of crowds out for a good time. Given how much the city has suffered since Hurricane Katrina, and is still suffering, it’s heartening to see that, two months after Mardi Gras and weeks before the big jazz festival, on a Thursday night, no less, this slice of NOLA was hopping.

Photo of cherry blossoms by Julia Ross.