Field Trip!!!!

Today I had an adventure! I had a half-day off of work, so I drove to Baltimore for a tweet-up with @CathyCarter, who was in town with her hubby for the Anime Convention. He sells stuff; she tours the area. :)

We'd started out planning to meet at Inner Harbor, which is a shopping and feeding paradise, until she mentioned the Anime thing, and that there'd be 12 bazillion costumed teenagers and other "young people", so we opted for Fells Point, instead.

Fells Point - Yes, I said it. Thanks, BR #2, for the suggestion the other day, and I'm sorry I doubted you. In my 25 years here, I've never been, so who knew?!?! YOU knew. And Cathy knew, too, and she is from out of town. *hangs head in shame* Cathy knew an awful lot more, too, but we'll get to that momentarily.

Today was a glorious day - 79, sunny, not humid - so I put the top down on the Miata and headed North. This is the view from the cockpit:

Niiiiice.

As soon as I got close to the Inner Harbor area, I saw signs of silliness. I know it's out of focus, but I was in traffic and I took this with my phone, but ... just LOOK, okay? -->

Do you see those costumed people on the walkway?!?!?! They were everywhere.

I finally found Fells Point, and found a place to park. We'll talk about that again in a sec, too. This statue was in the traffic circle near my parking place of choice:

Yeah, the photo sux, but I am actually quite proud of this next one:

That's a close-up of the water at the base of the fountain. Not bad, eh?

Okay, about that parking. Let me show you a map of the area:

This is the Baltimore Harbor. On the left is the Inner Harbor (think shopping, museums, crowds) and Fells Point is the part sticking out into the water there in the middle. Kindof.

This map shows you where we started from (from whence we started) to walk & meet at Fells Point:

I was the red dot on the left, and she was the red dot on the right. Could I have parked any further away?

We finally figured out we should just start walking towards each other, so we picked a street and started walking. These were our general respective paths:

We FINALLY met and there was much arm-waving and phone-hanging-up and hugs all around.

One of the places we passed on the way to find a feeding establishment was this one:

We passed it right by, but it looks like a very cool place, for the right kind of people, which I am not.

We eventually found a place to sit down, cool off, and have some refreshment.

We yapped and yapped and ate and drank and generally had a great time. Of course, since I didn't want to watch any of the 84 television screens, I glanced up at the ceiling and saw this:

A real tin ceiling! So cool.

Then, since the town is so pretty and the weather was GLORIOUS, we walked around a bit. We first heard, then saw, this bagpiper:

The shoes aren't so authentic, and maybe not the T-shirt, either, but the sound was good!

Since Cathy was smart, and had been a tourist at the Inner Harbor before, she knew all about the Water Taxi. She actually took it from the Inner Harbor area to Fells Point. Me - I walked 12, 436 blocks. So she suggested I take the taxi back to where I'd parked my car. She is so smart. I was ready to walk back. I am an idiot.

While we waited for the taxi, we walked out on one of the piers for some photo ops. Lookie what we saw:

A PIRATE SHIP! It's one of the things you can do to pass the time in the area. Who knew?!?! Besides Cathy, I mean.

Then we saw this Japanese boat docked along the pier:

It even had its own grill (I think that's a grill.)

This was a taxi similar to the one we took:

It turned out the taxi was an express, and only went back to the Inner Harbor, so we did that, then took another taxi that made all the stops. This was our return route via taxi:

A little circuitous, but it was a lovely day, I had blisters from my first hike, and what else did we have to do? :) And there were photo ops! Check out the light house:

... and the cool paddle wheel boats:

When we got to the Inner Harbor and waited for the next taxi for the second leg of the journey, we people-watched. Here are a few bad pics for you to get an idea of the types of peeps that attended the Anime convention:

Yep - in costume. Cathy knew which characters the costumed people represented. Color me clueless. Here's another one:


And, okay, one more:
As a college friend used to say, if that skirt were any shorter, she'd have two more cheeks to powder. But this is a family blog, so I won't say that here.

One of the other nice things about the harbor is it's really a harbor. There's a Tall Ship:

(here's a view from the other side:)

This is the USS Constellation - the last Civil War vessel afloat.

Of course, since this is a real harbor, there's also more modern ships, like these:

(okay, that's a cargo ship and a sail boat), and these:

which I'm calling Battleships.

On the second leg of the taxi ride, we caught a few other sites. There's the Hard Rock Cafe sign:

... and some old architecture juxtaposed with some new:

I found my car and headed out of town, at which point I was immediately caught in "rush" hour traffic. But I did get to take this photo while stopped:

See that tower? That's famous! It is! It's the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower. If you click on that link, be sure to appreciate the cool background on the site. ;)

I actually thought it was another tower, but it's not. I thought it was the Shot Tower, which is also famous, and very interesting. Very. They used to make shot there, like for shot guns. Go ahead and click on the link. You know you want to.

Then I made it home, and I rested. This evening I have stamped nothing, but I did play with sticky-back canvas, gel medium and map parts, and I made quite a mess. I hope to stick that stuff to a card tomorrow after the market. Speaking of which, tomorrow is supposed to be as GLORIOUS as today was, so I have high hopes for a good day.

Thanks for reading this far, and for stopping by!