My travels to the wrong-sided ocean
Aaron had a training/convention thingy to go to in Baltimore, so we bought me a plane ticket and he took a few days off. So two Sundays ago we made the long trek across the country (I got a lot of reading done) and landed in Baltimore at midnight local, I don't know what time we actually got to our hotel room, but it was late and Aaron had to be up and downstairs at the hotel at 8am. I slept a little longer then meandered down to try and find caffeine and something to eat. I ended up camping a table at the hotel cafe http://twitpic.com/476u3v and doing a little writing. Travel takes a lot out of me and I just wasn't up for much at that point.
Eventually I gathered enough gumption to wander in search of more food and something to do. I had a whole list of things I wanted to see and do in Baltimore. When I went down to the Concierge to inquire for directions I found out that literally EVERYTHING on my list was closed for the day or indefinitely. As I work for a museum that is closed on Mondays (which this was) there is a certain irony there. The one thing that was open (but had not been on my list) was the aquarium. I was assured that it was a VERY nice aquarium and had won awards. Meh. It wasn't on my list but I like aquariums-- aquarium it is then.
Doods, it is a very nice aquarium. I happened to have a lovely audiobook I was listening to, so I put that on and wandered through the aquarium. It was about perfect for my state of mind and body at the time. So yes, I wandered around looking at aquarium animals while listening about zombies and vampires. I highly recommend this approach to aquarium viewing. I could have done without the 4d movie (y'know the kind with rumble seats, pokes you in the back and sprays you with mist). I was wedged in between a very fussy toddler and a 6-8 year old kid who sounded EXACTLY like Woody Allen.
I was a little disturbed that even though I'd never been to Baltimore everything felt eerily familiar in the Inner Harbor. I mean it's a tourist area, but is every tourist harbor area in the whole world exactly alike? It could have been San Diego, Long Beach CA, San Francisco, or even Seattle's touristy harbor areas. I mean I just turned left at the Cheesecake Factory and hung a right at the Hard Rock and walked until I found a drug store (note: not actual directions, but close). The only thing that really stood out as being different was the Ben Franklin impersonator looking like he was about to have a heart attack at any moment while he shook his cane at seagulls.
I went back to the hotel and found that Aaron had won a Kindle as a door prize. Well, I guess that settles the e-reader debate in our household for at least several months (I still want something that will work for comics subscriptions eventually). This is sort of weird, because I'd ascertained the man sitting next to me on the plane into Baltimore was a geek and took the last 10 min of plane ride to chat him up about his Android tablet-- which pretty much put both Aaron and I over the edge towards one of those (not that we had far to go-- google owns us hardcore). I do really like the e-ink display and it is good at what it does, so maybe a two-device-solution isn't unreasonable. We named it Tasslehoff Kindle, because it made us giggle (though if it starts "borrowing" things we might have a problem).
I used the Yelp "location" button to locate the closest restaurants that did take out, ordered us a bunch of sushi. Totally the right call. Got some fresh wasabi salmon sashimi that was totally om nom nom.
Tuesday i wandered around a little more and went to the science museum... where the staff outnumbered the guests 5 to 1. Note to self, science museums are not good solo experiences. It was a good museum, just not really meant to be done solo and panicked about being "helped" by the abundant staff. I mean I enjoyed being inside the model of various cell types... but there's something lost when you can't goof off for an audience and get a quirky photo op out of it.
I was still totally wiped out so I finally gave up on the walking and went back to the hotel to chill out. We went out for crab cakes. Crab cakes were good, but I can't say that I like blue crab better than dungeoness. I also bought the awesomest figurine EVER http://twitpic.com/47mzww It is a merman ordering a beer. He shall forever remind me of Baltimore.
Wednesday was a travel day. We slept in as much as possible, packed up and drove to Washington DC. If you've ever been in a car with Aaron and I while we try to navigate somewhere we've never been... it was pretty much like every other time. Arguing, panic, and everything turning out perfectly fine. We are nothing if not predictable. We went to a Einstein Bagels to wait until our check in time.
I am not a nice person in the morning. At best I am sort of groggy and confused. At worst-- I bite and kick. Generally I round out somewhere in the "cranky" range. I can't eat anything (or drink most things) for at least an hour after I wake up. I'm not a pleasant person until I've had some caffeine and something to eat. The not being able to eat right away often means that eating gets put off and forgotten until things start going wrong. At work I keep a store of granola bars. At home there are a variety of healthy quick breakfast things. On the road... oops. I'd just like to apologize to anyone in that Einstein Bagels who was afeared I might shiv them should they get between me and my lox. I assure you, between Aaron and the TSA I had been completely disarmed.
We checked into our hotel and allowed them to upsell us to a room with a spa tub. I figured we would be glad of it with all the walking we'd be doing (I was right). I did not particularly figure on the tub being two steps from the bed and a shade of burgundy not seen since the 1970's. We immediately checked under the bed for corpses. Aaron made many jokes about the past occupants of the room that seemed a little too plausible to be entirely funny. The hotel had way more security than we needed or would ever warrant and we couldn't figure out why until we discovered we were pretty much across the street from the Russian embassy. Apparently the shuttle driver said "Excuse me for being late," in Russian one time (something I totally missed) and Aaron caught it because that was a phrase that he had to say every day when he was taking Russian in school. We decided not to brave driving or the hotel restaurant and ordered thai food which included the BEST mango and sticky rice either of us had ever had.
I think we were partially enjoying the OPTION of delivery and take out. You see at home-- no delivery. Pizza Hut doesn't come this far out of town and I can't think of anyone else who delivers at all. Other than pizza the only place that advertises take out is Denny's. We live in a food wasteland.
I got the Kindle working on the hotel wi-fi and we downloaded a Washington DC guidebook with maps (living in the future! Woo!). The thought was that it would make us look less like tourists if we were looking at the Kindle rather than unfolding tourist maps. No one happened to mention that the entire population of DC is age 18-30 and stress-thin. We, as well-fed middle-aged people scream tourist from every pore. I really liked DC. I liked the Metro. I liked the people and the conversations and that there were people from all over the world wherever you looked. If it wasn't for the fact that such an opportunity has flown, the ocean is on the wrong side and SNOW-- I think I would have loved living there as a single person rattling around the world. Just so many people to absorb details from. I dunno maybe I'd hate it after awhile... but a few days was nowhere near long enough and not just because we didn't see all the museums.
It is a weird thing to be waking up on the opposite coast when someone back home calls from the middle of the night to ask if they are supposed to evacuate when the tsunami sirens go off. (YES!) From the edge of our front yard, it is about 20 yards down to the blue line painted on the road that denotes the "Tsunami Zone". Our house is supposed to be safe, but eh... who knows? It is a strange thing to be walking through the halls of the Capital Building trying to figure out from Twitter if a tsunami has hit your home town and if there was any damage. For several hours I contemplated all the ways my town could be destroyed (most popular version had a relatively small tsunami coming in at high tide and surging up the river to take out the dam).
Museums. This of course was largely the reason for our visit. Visiting museums in DC is probably as close to a religious pilgrimage as I have ever done. We saw a lot of museums. We saw probably 30% of what there is to see, and our stamina was nowhere near what it needed to be to even do what we did. Between jet lag, insomnia, and exertion, we were totally trashed in two days of museum visits. Friday night I emailed behindpyramids and was like "Uhm Hi, we're kinda in the area-- you wanna hang?" We chatted on the phone for awhile and made plans to meet up Saturday afternoon. Aaron took like 14 pictures of me until he found one where he said I wasn't doing something weird with my eyebrows (I can't help it... I have camera reactive eyebrows) and sent it to her so she'd know who to look for. I did also mention I was traveling with a long-haired man the size of your standard door frame.
Through a quirk of scheduling we ended up meeting just outside the Vietnam Memorial. Aaron was glowering at a group of Marine ROTC being drilled around a flagpole near the memorial. As he pointed out later, it isn't a military monument, it's a victims of the military monument. I was eye rolling at a gentleman who had a half-size "Don't Tread On Me" flag draped over his back and was going around posturing like he was waiting for someone to start a verbal fight with him. I assumed that she was the only person meeting someone at the memorial (cause really... WHO suggests someone meet them there? *points thumbs* Me.) and waved her over and introduced Aaron but apparently forgot to introduce her (I'm bad at that, but he knows that and just sort of rolls with things).
We all walked back to the Mall and got lunch under the National Art Gallery buildings. We talked about all sorts of things and nothing. behindpyramids and I ended up wandering around the West Wing of the Art Gallery talking about writing and pointing out particularly creepy baby jesus iconography to one another. It was absolutely fabulous and I think we could have talked for days. I don't think there's a better person to wander around an art gallery talking about writing with (though I'm pretty sure we could have found any other location equally enchanting). I just wish I hadn't been so tired that day. Hopefully she writes about our afternoon some time, because she'd describe it a lot better than I just did.
I hope I get to go back soon. There was so much more to see, and so many interesting people.
Eventually I gathered enough gumption to wander in search of more food and something to do. I had a whole list of things I wanted to see and do in Baltimore. When I went down to the Concierge to inquire for directions I found out that literally EVERYTHING on my list was closed for the day or indefinitely. As I work for a museum that is closed on Mondays (which this was) there is a certain irony there. The one thing that was open (but had not been on my list) was the aquarium. I was assured that it was a VERY nice aquarium and had won awards. Meh. It wasn't on my list but I like aquariums-- aquarium it is then.
Doods, it is a very nice aquarium. I happened to have a lovely audiobook I was listening to, so I put that on and wandered through the aquarium. It was about perfect for my state of mind and body at the time. So yes, I wandered around looking at aquarium animals while listening about zombies and vampires. I highly recommend this approach to aquarium viewing. I could have done without the 4d movie (y'know the kind with rumble seats, pokes you in the back and sprays you with mist). I was wedged in between a very fussy toddler and a 6-8 year old kid who sounded EXACTLY like Woody Allen.
I was a little disturbed that even though I'd never been to Baltimore everything felt eerily familiar in the Inner Harbor. I mean it's a tourist area, but is every tourist harbor area in the whole world exactly alike? It could have been San Diego, Long Beach CA, San Francisco, or even Seattle's touristy harbor areas. I mean I just turned left at the Cheesecake Factory and hung a right at the Hard Rock and walked until I found a drug store (note: not actual directions, but close). The only thing that really stood out as being different was the Ben Franklin impersonator looking like he was about to have a heart attack at any moment while he shook his cane at seagulls.
I went back to the hotel and found that Aaron had won a Kindle as a door prize. Well, I guess that settles the e-reader debate in our household for at least several months (I still want something that will work for comics subscriptions eventually). This is sort of weird, because I'd ascertained the man sitting next to me on the plane into Baltimore was a geek and took the last 10 min of plane ride to chat him up about his Android tablet-- which pretty much put both Aaron and I over the edge towards one of those (not that we had far to go-- google owns us hardcore). I do really like the e-ink display and it is good at what it does, so maybe a two-device-solution isn't unreasonable. We named it Tasslehoff Kindle, because it made us giggle (though if it starts "borrowing" things we might have a problem).
I used the Yelp "location" button to locate the closest restaurants that did take out, ordered us a bunch of sushi. Totally the right call. Got some fresh wasabi salmon sashimi that was totally om nom nom.
Tuesday i wandered around a little more and went to the science museum... where the staff outnumbered the guests 5 to 1. Note to self, science museums are not good solo experiences. It was a good museum, just not really meant to be done solo and panicked about being "helped" by the abundant staff. I mean I enjoyed being inside the model of various cell types... but there's something lost when you can't goof off for an audience and get a quirky photo op out of it.
I was still totally wiped out so I finally gave up on the walking and went back to the hotel to chill out. We went out for crab cakes. Crab cakes were good, but I can't say that I like blue crab better than dungeoness. I also bought the awesomest figurine EVER http://twitpic.com/47mzww It is a merman ordering a beer. He shall forever remind me of Baltimore.
Wednesday was a travel day. We slept in as much as possible, packed up and drove to Washington DC. If you've ever been in a car with Aaron and I while we try to navigate somewhere we've never been... it was pretty much like every other time. Arguing, panic, and everything turning out perfectly fine. We are nothing if not predictable. We went to a Einstein Bagels to wait until our check in time.
I am not a nice person in the morning. At best I am sort of groggy and confused. At worst-- I bite and kick. Generally I round out somewhere in the "cranky" range. I can't eat anything (or drink most things) for at least an hour after I wake up. I'm not a pleasant person until I've had some caffeine and something to eat. The not being able to eat right away often means that eating gets put off and forgotten until things start going wrong. At work I keep a store of granola bars. At home there are a variety of healthy quick breakfast things. On the road... oops. I'd just like to apologize to anyone in that Einstein Bagels who was afeared I might shiv them should they get between me and my lox. I assure you, between Aaron and the TSA I had been completely disarmed.
We checked into our hotel and allowed them to upsell us to a room with a spa tub. I figured we would be glad of it with all the walking we'd be doing (I was right). I did not particularly figure on the tub being two steps from the bed and a shade of burgundy not seen since the 1970's. We immediately checked under the bed for corpses. Aaron made many jokes about the past occupants of the room that seemed a little too plausible to be entirely funny. The hotel had way more security than we needed or would ever warrant and we couldn't figure out why until we discovered we were pretty much across the street from the Russian embassy. Apparently the shuttle driver said "Excuse me for being late," in Russian one time (something I totally missed) and Aaron caught it because that was a phrase that he had to say every day when he was taking Russian in school. We decided not to brave driving or the hotel restaurant and ordered thai food which included the BEST mango and sticky rice either of us had ever had.
I think we were partially enjoying the OPTION of delivery and take out. You see at home-- no delivery. Pizza Hut doesn't come this far out of town and I can't think of anyone else who delivers at all. Other than pizza the only place that advertises take out is Denny's. We live in a food wasteland.
I got the Kindle working on the hotel wi-fi and we downloaded a Washington DC guidebook with maps (living in the future! Woo!). The thought was that it would make us look less like tourists if we were looking at the Kindle rather than unfolding tourist maps. No one happened to mention that the entire population of DC is age 18-30 and stress-thin. We, as well-fed middle-aged people scream tourist from every pore. I really liked DC. I liked the Metro. I liked the people and the conversations and that there were people from all over the world wherever you looked. If it wasn't for the fact that such an opportunity has flown, the ocean is on the wrong side and SNOW-- I think I would have loved living there as a single person rattling around the world. Just so many people to absorb details from. I dunno maybe I'd hate it after awhile... but a few days was nowhere near long enough and not just because we didn't see all the museums.
It is a weird thing to be waking up on the opposite coast when someone back home calls from the middle of the night to ask if they are supposed to evacuate when the tsunami sirens go off. (YES!) From the edge of our front yard, it is about 20 yards down to the blue line painted on the road that denotes the "Tsunami Zone". Our house is supposed to be safe, but eh... who knows? It is a strange thing to be walking through the halls of the Capital Building trying to figure out from Twitter if a tsunami has hit your home town and if there was any damage. For several hours I contemplated all the ways my town could be destroyed (most popular version had a relatively small tsunami coming in at high tide and surging up the river to take out the dam).
Museums. This of course was largely the reason for our visit. Visiting museums in DC is probably as close to a religious pilgrimage as I have ever done. We saw a lot of museums. We saw probably 30% of what there is to see, and our stamina was nowhere near what it needed to be to even do what we did. Between jet lag, insomnia, and exertion, we were totally trashed in two days of museum visits. Friday night I emailed behindpyramids and was like "Uhm Hi, we're kinda in the area-- you wanna hang?" We chatted on the phone for awhile and made plans to meet up Saturday afternoon. Aaron took like 14 pictures of me until he found one where he said I wasn't doing something weird with my eyebrows (I can't help it... I have camera reactive eyebrows) and sent it to her so she'd know who to look for. I did also mention I was traveling with a long-haired man the size of your standard door frame.
Through a quirk of scheduling we ended up meeting just outside the Vietnam Memorial. Aaron was glowering at a group of Marine ROTC being drilled around a flagpole near the memorial. As he pointed out later, it isn't a military monument, it's a victims of the military monument. I was eye rolling at a gentleman who had a half-size "Don't Tread On Me" flag draped over his back and was going around posturing like he was waiting for someone to start a verbal fight with him. I assumed that she was the only person meeting someone at the memorial (cause really... WHO suggests someone meet them there? *points thumbs* Me.) and waved her over and introduced Aaron but apparently forgot to introduce her (I'm bad at that, but he knows that and just sort of rolls with things).
We all walked back to the Mall and got lunch under the National Art Gallery buildings. We talked about all sorts of things and nothing. behindpyramids and I ended up wandering around the West Wing of the Art Gallery talking about writing and pointing out particularly creepy baby jesus iconography to one another. It was absolutely fabulous and I think we could have talked for days. I don't think there's a better person to wander around an art gallery talking about writing with (though I'm pretty sure we could have found any other location equally enchanting). I just wish I hadn't been so tired that day. Hopefully she writes about our afternoon some time, because she'd describe it a lot better than I just did.
I hope I get to go back soon. There was so much more to see, and so many interesting people.