Dear Blogger, please excuse my tardiness...

What a long, strange trip it's been.

Jeff and I haven't really been in Cleveland a whole lot lately. We were in Washington DC for a few days and then we visited Columbus for the annual St. Patrick's Day party at his parent's house. According to Jeff's Dad, he's had the celebration every year since 1978.

Anyway, here's some of what we saw:


The Smithsonian Castle



Inside the National Cathedral


A Peruvian Court Dress at the Kennedy Center


The gate into Chinatown



The Capitol Building

I have a lot more of our pictures on my Flickr page. Jeff also took a lot of pictures. Check them out if you have the chance.

After a wonderful bike ride when we arrived, Jeff took me to Kanlaya Thai Cuisine in Chinatown. The food was amazing! I had pineapple chicken that was actually in a hollowed out pineapple half. I had a couple of the cliche "umbrella drinks" and sloppily professed my undying love to Jeff - it was true but I'm sure anything I may have regretted saying could have been blamed on the alcohol - right? We spent the evening doing a crossword puzzle until I fell asleep.

The next morning we ate convenience store muffins and yogurt and headed out to the Metro and around DC. We walked around all day, and stopped back in Chinatown to eat at Tony Cheng's. This restaurant had Mongolian food on the first floor, and Chinese food on the second floor. We went upstairs and ended up having one of the best Chinese meals either of us had ever had. I ate the Kung Pao chicken with an egg roll, rice and hot and sour soup. My meal ended up costing about $13.00. (Amazing!!)

We considered visiting Madame Tussaud's wax museum but balked at the $19.95 admission fee. I settled for photographing Whoopi in the lobby and we moved on.


Whoopi Goldberg acting as a DC panhandler

In the late afternoon the sun disappeared and it got a bit colder. We visited the Lincoln Memorial and enjoyed a free concert at the Kennedy Center. After getting back to the hotel, we decided to check out a mexican restaurant and went to La Lomita Dos.

I wasn't as impressed as I have been with certain restaurants in Cleveland and Columbus.

Por ejemplo...

We ordered the "Chorizo con Queso" from the appetizer menu, only to find it was not chorizo...It was SMOKED SAUSAGE!! Yucky. The rest of the meal was good, but it took forever and a day to get the check. It was overpriced for generic mexican food, but there was a Mariachi band and that made things a little better.

On our last day, we visited the National Cathedral. This was one of my favorite sightseeing trips. My first few minutes in the cathedral were filled with quiet awe - I'm pretty sure that I stared with my mouth agape at times. Religious or not, there's an energy about that place.


This picture reminded me of Grace Cathedral Hill by The Decemberists.

And yes, I did pay 25 cents to light a little white candle! (The suggested donation was $1, shh)

On the way out of DC we had lunch at Satay Club where I had a very inexpensive and very filling lunch (General Tso's, hot and sour soup and potstickers) for $7.95. Yum!

It was an amazing trip, altogether. We found out a lot about ourselves and each other, we're stronger and (if possible) we love each other a whole lot more now. The first trip we took together was to DC, almost three years ago, so it was a little nostalgic too. We saw Ozma in DC at the 9:30 Club. I fell asleep during The Rentals set. Nothing against the band, I was just VERY tired. I had to tote around a cute guy with a broken arm, jeez...

I hereby vow to post a bunch more starting today. We went back to Columbus for a wedding last week and had a great time, but I sorely missed my city and have wanted to be home. I missed you, Cleveland (and your bloggers!)!