Here's our clown / luggage car. We packed as much stuff into the Honda CR-V as we possibly could. I'm surprised the rear wasn't dragging.
You're probably wondering why we're bringing a CASIO keyboard with us on vacation. We're not the Partridge Family and we don't rock out on vacation. We were stopping in Baltimore on our way to Rehoboth Beach, DE to visit "little" John in his new digs and pick him up to take him with us. So, we had some stuff to drop off with him...thankfully. We still were worried that even after getting rid of some stuff, one of us might have to ride on the roof.
After a quick stop at Dunkin' Donuts (already let go of Weight Watchers for the week...), we were on our way!
Bay State to Nutmeg State: I didn't catch the "Welcome to Connecticut" sign, so this will have to do:
Nutmeg State to Empire State:
Empire State to Garden State:
Grace is smiling because we're getting close now....and nothing has fallen into her lap for an hour or so...
Garden State to First State:
First State to Old Line State....last stop for today!
All in all, our drive was pretty smooth and we didn't encounter any major traffic jams/accidents.
We arrived in Baltimore at our hotel, the Radisson Plaza Lord Baltimore. I'd read not so good things about it, so was slightly worried. Overall, it was fine, although I did text my Dad and say, "I think someone was murdered in this room." (There was a stain on the rug and one of the windows was cracked.) We concurred that back in its day it was probably a grand hotel (the lobby shows this), but it's experienced wear and tear over time. John parked the car...oh, and there's another interesting tidbit about staying in downtown Baltimore --- the hotels don't have their own garages. There are several underground public parking garages that charge by the hour which hotels refer their customers to. It was slightly inconvenient for us based on the amount of "stuff" that we needed to bring up to the hotel room, to little John's apartment, etc... Luckily, his apartment was a hop, skip, and jump from the hotel/garage.
After we reunited in the hotel room, we then headed to the inner harbor to eat dinner. (It was approximately a 5-10 minute walk.)
If you haven't been, the Inner Harbor is just what it says. It has a touristy shopping plaza that surrounds parts of the harbor/seaport. There are stores, restaurants, National Aquarium, paddle boats in the shape of dragons (which are apparently named "Chessie" -- I'm guessing after "Chesapeake"), and the Maryland 9/11 Memorial. Oh, and did I mention that there are actually ships there? (Harbor -- ships -- makes sense.)
We had lots of restaurants to choose from, but once Grace heard "Hard Rock Cafe," it was decided. It was almost the furthest to walk to...and guess what? There was a private function going on and it was CLOSED! We walked a little further and we ended up at Houlihan's, which was somewhat nostalgic for me, as I used to go there where I lived in D.C. We had some good food (& good drinks) and made our way back to see John's new digs.
Great place! Beautiful building and great apartment. He had gotten new bedroom/office furniture from IKEA and there were a few loose screws (pun intended?)/things out of whack after everything had gotten put together. While the men were being men and "fixing stuff" Grace was in America's Next Top Model mode.
(I wish I knew how to use Photoshop -- I'd put a caption over the heads of the guys in the second one. "What do you think THIS does???") Actually, they were watching a YouTube video on putting together/adjusting this specific chair from IKEA. Really. What did we do before the Internet?
After this confab, we headed back to our hotel to try to get some rest.
NEXT: Day 2 in Baltimore!
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