Good morning, Baltimore!

Sorry for disappearing for a few days without telling you - I went to Baltimore for two days and am only now back home.

So contrary to popularly expressed opinion of its certainty, I did not get killed in Baltimore. I have to say I wasn't very adventurous though and stayed mostly in the Inner Harbor/Little Italy area which is mostly touristy and harmless. They have done up the Inner Harbor a great deal, but it does still feel a bit like a shabby port with a fresh coat of paint. But you have to start somewhere and they have lots of things they've done that work really well - free circulator buses that go through all the neighbourhoods that a visitor would want to go, water taxis that go around the harbour area, that sort of thing. It was freezing though on our first day, so no water taxis for us!

I splurged and stayed at a great hotel - Brookshire Suites (if you are ever in Baltimore, I recommend it). My room had a view of the harbour (down a few blocks, but still, a view!). I love Expedia.

My first stop was to the Visionary Art Museum where my friend's partner has some sculpture in their permanent collection, including:

The museum was really neat. Full of strange and crazy sculpture and painting. The complex is three building and allows for large installations (like this hand!) and feels very welcoming and has a very touchy-feely approach to visual art. Lots of displays you could touch and the descriptions of the work were "chatty" in tone. This approach might drive serious art people mad, but for me, it felt like an institution that was really trying to be in touch with its community. My favourite wall inside (apart from the other work done by my friend) was by a teenager (well likely early 20s now) who had started making replicas of 3000 famous works of art. So the wall was done like you were looking at doll house size art works set up in a mini- gallery. His work is so good that the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam bought his version of Starry Night because MoMa owns the original. So now when visitors there ask to see that work, they are directed to his miniature of it. I like that.

This was a parking lot in Little Italy. You put your money in the slot for your parking space. It was a crazy setup. And well, a bit ghetto.

We ate dinner in Little Italy. Though there are some really expensive restaurants, there are still some mom and pop places and Italian banks and bocci courts. I'm not sure if any Italians still live there, but it certainly feels like a lived in neighbourhood - there has been little or no gentrification to the houses which is a little surprising considering how close it is to the touristy places.

Our restaurant was awesome. It felt like in the 1950s it would have been really fancy, but that it hadn't been renovated - or likely even dusted - since. So everything was a little worn and a little tired looking - shabby chic. The waitresses wore uniforms like Alice wore on the Brady Bunch. Everyone dining there knew each other. The three tables all around us kept getting up to talk to each other and if they didn't see their waitress they'd just call one of the others over by name. After dinner, we went down the street to a dessert place - the kind you know is good because there is a line up out the door even when it's chilly out. In fact, it was so good, we went back the next day too. I still have some leftovers from the world's largest Napoleon.

Of course we went to the aquarium. I have to say, it really is as good as people say. I did not go to the dolphin show as I have morale objections to them, but everything else was so well laid out and set up. In its main wing, you could see the scientists while they worked with the sting rays.

I call him Fred.

So those were the hi-lights.

On the Beltway on the way home, you pass this:

Um, yeah, that's the Mormon Temple. Looks like an evil warlord's castle to me, but hey.

Weird tidbit about the Beltway I hadn't realized, if you stay on it, you will just go around and around in a circle. Around and around Washington. It is actually two big loops (the inner loop and the outer loop). Strange.