Friday, April 20, 2012

Cherry Blossom Saga

After not having much luck in DC, my quest to see cherry blossoms continued last weekend when I went to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. I finally got to see them en masse and they were fantastic! 
There were several different varieties but the big fluffy white/light pink ones were my favorite :)
My friend Susy was nice enough to brave her allergies and go with me. She helped me document my cherry blossom experience :)
There weren't many flowers blooming but almost all of the trees were in bloom, the lilac smelled amazing!
Another one of my favorite trees, the Japenese Magnolia, so pretty :)
Pretty much the only flowers in bloom were the tulips. Somehow everything blooming seemed to be color coordinated, all nice shades of pink, purple and white.
The weather happened to be great which made for a pretty perfect day at the botanical gardens, I think this may need to be a yearly tradition :)

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

DC Weekend

A few weekends ago John and I took the bus down to DC in the hopes of seeing the cherry blossoms. Ever since we moved to NY I've been dying to go to the cherry blossom festival. We finally made plans to go this year over Easter weekend because I had Good Friday off but because the weather has been so warm the trees bloomed early. We had to scramble and change our plans to go earlier but unfortunately we still missed the blossoms. Here are all of the trees that were supposed to be full of cherry blossoms :(
On the plus side, it was still a really nice break from the city and we got to visit with my cousin and her husband. We rented bikes and spent Saturday riding around DC which was lots of fun even though it made me realize how tremendously out of shape I am!
At least the tulips were in bloom :)
Biking around the memorials and monuments was definitely the way to go, we got to see tons of stuff, most of which I had never seen before.
Jefferson Memorial
 MLK Memorial (not quite sure how I feel about the pose) 
 Lincoln Memorial
On top of all the other stuff there happened to be a kite festival at the Washington monument :)

We had a great trip to DC even though it was really short. We had to rush back on Sunday to host a watch party for the Game of Thrones season premier. It was a little tight getting back in the city at 5:30 and having people over at 7 but it turned out great. I always love having people over but this time it was John's idea. He even had ideas for what he wanted to feed people!
We had our usual party food: spincach dip, deviled eggs, and of course introducing cheese dip to non-southerners is always a must :) John wanted to cook everyone dinner too so he made flank steak and I made brussels sprouts. We had so many people come over that we had to rearrange our furniture!
It took a couple of days to get everything back to normal after being gone for the weekend and then hosting the party but having Good Friday off last week definitely helped :)