Good Morning Baltimore

  Baltimore, Maryland, United States
Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Another day, another two hour bus trip.  Unfortunately, having to have a route re-think for various different reasons (including, but not limited to, whimpishness!)  This means no Mount Rushmore for me :(  But it does mean a trip to Baltimore, yeah...or so  thought!

My main thoughts on Baltimore:  lovely...if you stay in the places you're supposed to and never, never, venture further.  A guy at the bus station asked to see my trainers.  I swear I honestly thought he was going to steal them and pawn them, until he saw they were Dunlops!

Anyway, to the nice bits.  Well, my hostel was lovely and very secure.  Full of Russians.  I mean it, seriously.  I'm the only English person there, there's a large group of Asian looking folks and everyone else is Russian.

Baltimore -the nice part!

Top of my list of things to do was go to the Aquarium.  I was secretly hoping it would be rubbish and Plymouth's would be way better.  Alas...it was awesome!  Four floors for a start (seriously, what are Americans compensating for?).  Speaking of which, their rays were huge and there sharks were actual shark looking sharks!  And the absolutely, spanking best bit?  The dolphin show.  I know, I know, dolphins can't smile, but that's not the way it looked to me.  I videoed the whole thing.  Oh yeah.

Also had a look round the quite nice harbour.  Reminded me of the Barbican or somewhere French.  There's also a nice place just near my hostel called Mount Vernon which has some old monuments and the Peabody Institute.  I had my dinner in this area in an Afghanistan restaurant owned by the Prince of Afghanistan's brother or something.  It was uber tasty (Uber?  To describe Afghan food?  Is that allowed?)  I had a ginormous vegetarian platter.  Any chance for veggie food and you have to consume as much as possible. I call it veggie destroyer tactics (an oxymoron?!)

Baltimore -the nice part!

There is more to Baltimore (no pun intended) but I didn't want to go looking for it for fear of what else I might find!