Spring in the city

it's spring-hooray! so far in dc, the weather appears to be a bit bipolar. one minute it's 80 and sunny, then it's cloudy and 55, the wind blows one day, it rains the next and then it's sunny and warm again. needless to say, i have no clue what to wear. ever. kind of annoying, but it has led to some wonderful days! for one thing, dc held its annual kite festival. i LOVE kites. they're so pretty and colorful and i think it's really interesting when people can do cool things with their kites (i'm not one of those people, but that's why i'm a watcher). lp and i wandered down to the kite festival. it was sunny (yay) and 50 (boo) and windy (double boo). the scenery was beyond gorgeous!! colorful kites flying against a backdrop of the capitol and the washington monument is kind of amazing.

this guy had a tiny little car. it was hilarious!

i was kind of obsessed with how much fun all the kids were having

butterfly kites!!

motorcycle kite!

3 guys singing "under the boardwalk"- their harmonies were great!

wandering back, checking out the cherry blossoms

the next weekend, we were invited to a bbq in brookland (what what). our friends chris and eileen hosted a little shindig out in the NE so lp, his roomie jj and i all headed over there. it was GORGEOUS outside that day. 80 and sunny, a little breeze, perfect. there was a smoked ham, traditional bbq sides and grilled pineapple:

eileen did not want her picture taken

puppy!

no bbq is complete without a few beers

eileens rainbow jello creation (i named it the ROY G BIV)

sweet puppy face

trash next door

after 5 years together, lp and i finally decided to celebrate our anniversary! we have no clue when it actually is (we're so romantic) so we made up a date (april 2) and went out to a great dinner at a seafood place by my house. on monday, i came home and lp told me to check the mail. i went down and there was a box of beautiful tulips for me!! i love getting flowers and it was a wonderful surprise!!!!

a little droopy, but they perked up the next day (of course, i didn't get a picture!)

so spring is here. it's been in the 50-60's here. i'm ready for sun.

You know that roooooome, is gonna be mine!

so, finally, i'm getting this last day in rome done! i am so slow at this. anyway, on that last day (it was a sunday) we get up for my last day of meat and cheese breakfast. so sad! we decided to head back to the vatican that morning since we didn't get a chance to go it the last time we were there.

walking there, great view!

there was a race going on in part of the city we had to walk through! it made me feel like i was home!

i really wanted to go up in st. peter's dome because it is supposed to be the best view of the city, but since we were totally thrown off on our days and didn't realize it was sunday, it was closed. boooooo.

a kiss made me feel better

instead, we just went inside the cathedral place. it was really pretty, but a little smelly. maybe all the people.....? i don't know, but what i DO know is that is was crowded!
yeah, only one picture. can you tell i was tired of lugging a camera around and taking pictures? sorry blog readers! i just wasn't feelin' it. but the good thing is that you know what it looks like! ha!! i LOVED the guards' outfits!!!!
anyway, we come out and there is a HUGE ENORMOUS crowd outside. at first, we had no clue what was going on but then we realized - duh!- it's sunday and it must be a service. there was an old, scratchy, warbly voice coming over a loud speaker singing (?) in latin. everyone seemed to be looking up at something, so we followed the eyes and lo and behold- the pope was hanging out in the window singing!!!

banner is hanging below the window where the pope is

after we left the vatican, i was starving so we headed to find a bite to eat. i had some delicious pasta (as usual!) and wine (again, as usual!). i hadn't seen the pantheon, so we decided to head that way. by this time, i was just absolutely exhausted for some reason and was totally needing a nap so i put lp in charge of the pics.

we stayed for about 10 minutes and i was a little too overwhelmed with the people to stay so we went back to our hotel and i took another nap. when i got up, it was time for dinner- hooray! we went a little place by our hotel and then took one last look at the trevi fountain before heading to bed early. lp's flight was super early (we had to leave at 4!!) and since he got his cab paid for by his work, i rode with him. it was a super trip and i had so much fun!! can't wait to get back to italy sometime!

Ugh! I'm sorry.

day 3- rome. today we woke up and had a delicious breakfast of meat and cheese (seriously, i ate that everyday for breakfast. it was weird and i loved it). we had decided that we would get going and trek it on over to the colleseum. it was a super nice day!

me taking a pic of lp taking a pic!

here we are!

on the way in, there are all these dude dressed up as gladiators. too funny!

the road there

old stuff

on our way to the collosseum!

whoa. it's almost hard to believe how old this stuff is!

the inside, where the gladiators used to kick it!

after we walked around for a bit we decided to walk over to an area called the jewish ghetto. we walked around for a bit and found a really amazing leather shop. lp was looking for a briefcase/bag for work and this shop was awesome. the man and woman who worked there made all the bags themselves! we found the perfect bag for him and decided to grab a drink while we thought about it so we walked over to this open air market and sat at a table outside. it was great people watching!

i was getting hungry so we decided to find this pizza i kept seeing everyone eating. it was this little pizza shop where no one spoke english and it was fast and crazy, but i ate the best pizza of my entire life there. ever. it was sooooo good that i burned my mouth the whole time i ate it because i couldn't stop eating it! after we ate, we went back and got lp's bag. it was really cool! by now, it was about time for my daily nap so i headed back for a little down time. when we got up, we decided to head over to the place we had found our first night that had the huge fish in the window. it was yummy! i had the most delicious gnocchi ever. so good! we then decided to head out for one night on the town. i'd read about this club that had 50's and 60's music (sidenote: lp and i are really into this genre of music. it is SO MUCH FUN to dance to!!!). when we got there, a band was playing. they were pretty good and it was fun to hang out and drink bellinis for a bit before we decided to head home. as we got out of the cab by our hotel, we noticed the bar by our place was super crowded and kind of jumping so we decided to stop in a grab a beer. or, a liter of beer. that's right, i ordered (without really knowing how much it was) a liter of beer. ha! and gross. we sat there for a bit and then poured the rest of our beer into plastic cups and took them to the fountain to finish them before heading to bed. overall, a great day in rome!!!