For a class project I'm working on, I went up to Fairmount Park this afternoon to photograph the cherry blossoms. There are over 1,000 of these trees in the Philly park system, and for only about two weeks per year they grace the city with their pillows of pink and white. You can still make it this year - these are from near the Horticultural Center and the Please Touch Museum - but in case you won't, you can at least admire them right here.
It was the BF's and my 2 year anniversary this weekend (<squeal!> oh, I know). To commemorate we decided that a nice dinner out would be sweet, and while really a customary choice for such an event, it allowed me to wear my new pretty cocktail dress and play arm candy to my similarly well-dressed boy. However, stillettos and feels-like-freezing Philly temps aren't the best pair ... unless you count how your feet get numb from all that stress you can't even feel them.
Regardless, we made the trip to the Rittenhouse Square area and enjoyed a lovely meal (read: BYOB) at La Viola. Yes, the restaurant was smaller than any I've been in that were meant to accomodate 50 people (we were practically in the laps of the couple next to us) and it was loud, cramped, and you had a new waiter running past you at any minute, but all that really only added to the place's charm. The cuisine is Italian, so you almost expect that loud, welcoming, big-family sort of atmosphere and the close quarters made it feel special and distinct. The lighting was romantic, the service was particularly speedy, and the food - my God - was delicious. That's my fettucine al salmone in cream sauce; I regret not having a better picture to really showcase the I-can-die-happy-now goodness.
AND Love Actually was on this weekend. The holidays and love are upon us!
Any Philly-ites out there have other restaurant raves? It's my goal to eat my way through the city in 2009.
Hello, reader. Missed me? So have I - I've been feeling a bit sick the past couple days. Just a head cold kind of thing and I'm sure I'll make a full recovery, but although I've done a lot of staring at this computer screen the past few days, what I've made sense of and have been able to concentrate on has been little.
When in such a state where I am preoccupied by only my thoughts and a runny nose, I do tend to Google a lot though. Pretty much anything that comes into my head is fair game, and sometimes, if I'm luckly, I end up coming across some really cool stuff. Combined with my work as an intern in Philly this week, I now give you the best of my recent Philadelphia-centric blog finds - a genre that I was fairly convinced hardly existed until now. I'm fairly happy and impressed.
