Restaurant Week begins this week

Don’t forget that this coming week is the 2008 Winter Restaurant Week. With over 175 restaurants participating in this event, check to see if your favorite restaurant is participating and head on over there for a fixed-price three course meal. Lunch will run you $20.08 per person and dinner for about $30.08. Worried about not having space for you when you get to the restaurant? Book your spot ahead of time by going to OpenTable. Most of the restaurants on the Restaurant Week website have links to the OpenTable page so you’ll be able to make your reservations quickly, easily, and for free.

Now you may think that Restaurant Week is just a bogus holiday that the folks at DC want just to hit up some restaurants…you might want to rethink it. It’s definitely not a holiday, but more a celebration of the cultural diversity in the types of cuisine that exists in the city. Many other cities have Restaurant Week celebrations and it’s just a great excuse to meet up with your friends, have some good food, and enjoy a great time. So make your reservations today and Bon Appetit!

DC promotes it’s latest movie tie-in with “Trails To Treasure Tour”

With the upcoming December 21 release of Disney Pictures’ latest movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets starring Nicolas Cage, the DC tourism bureau has launched a Trails to Treasure Tour campaign that is supposed to inspire folks to follow along and try and solve the clues and win a trip to the nation’s capital for two people. The clues are all around and you can pick up a map and brochure to find out the clues or you can go online to www.TrailsToTreasure.com and look at them there. There’s so much more that apparently will be on that site…it seems that they’re even thinking about a podcast and trying to make it more interactive. It would be interesting to see how many folks decide to participate in this whole promotion and I know that Disney is definitely trying to make it as big if not bigger than the first movie. Oh, and there are hotel packages available for like $109/night.

The 2008 National Cherry Blossom Festival is here…soon…

Experience some of Washington, DC’s greatest seasonal events with the 2008 National Cherry Blossom Festival. Visit the city for two weeks of exciting events, celebrations, and activities including a Family Day and Opening Ceremony, Sushi & Sake tasting, a fireworks show, the annual Parade of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, a Sakura Matsuri-Japanese Street Festival, and much more! Tickets are on sale now for these events and available through Ticketmaster.com or (202) 397-SEAT. If you want tickets to the sushi & sake tasting and the gala dinner cruise, you better get them fast – call (202) 661-7585.

Head down to the nation’s capital from March 29-April 13 for the National Cherry Blossom Festival. There’s much more to do in the city, including participating restaurants offering themed cuisine for the festival, but definitely make sure you stop by during these two weeks and enjoy the scenery of the magnificent trees given to the United States by the Japanese and is an annual tradition in DC.

Restaurant Week set to return on January 14

Everyone’s favorite time to check out some of the cuisine at some of the city’s best restaurants is back and will happen from January 14-20 with lunches costing you $20.08 and dinners $30.08. Check out the latest updates and complete list of participating restaurants at www.restaurantweekdc.org.

Get your spending on with the DC Sales Tax Holiday

This is from the city’s Office of Taxes and Revenue:

The District government will have its sales tax holiday beginning 12:01 am Friday, November 23, through midnight Sunday, December 2. During the tax holiday, shoppers will be exempt from the District’s 5.75 percent sales tax. Specific items include clothes, shoes, and accessory items that cost $100 or less.

The sales tax exemption applies to each eligible item regardless of how many items are sold on the same bill to a customer. It also applies to layaway sales, if the retailer and customer enter into a layaway agreement or the customer makes the final payment on the layaway order during the exemption period.

Retailers who use the Sales-and-Use tax forms for filing their monthly or annual tax returns should enter the total amount of tax exempted because of the Sales Tax Holiday, along with any other exempt taxes on the sales tax portion of the return (line no. 13). Retailers are also encouraged to clearly state in their records the type of item sold and the sales price of tax-exempt merchandise sold during the Sales Tax Holiday period.

For more information about the Sales Tax Holiday, the public and businesses should call the Customer Service Center at (202) 727-4TAX (4829) or visit OTR’s website at www.taxpayerservicecenter.com under “Sales Tax Holiday.”