St. Patty's in Alexandria

Yes, it's super early, but the parade was Saturday! Jeff and I headed Old Town to check out the dog show and the parade. Well, it took us longer than we thought to get there via bus, so we missed the actual dog show and got to see all of these crazy dogs hanging out dressed up as leprechauns before the parade. The wind was REALLY cold. Eventually we decided we'd prefer to observe the parade from Le Pain Quotidien, which has a delicious Mediterranean platter with hummus, baba ganouj, and tabouleh, not to mention a decadent Belgian praline spread. So we watched the parade from a heated restaurant, which was even smarter than we realized - the police stopped the parade in sections to let traffic through, which made it super long. We were impressed by the enormous wolf hounds...

but we are still puzzled as to what Storm Troopers had to do with Ireland.

--jess