Baltimore Part 4: Easter weekend

The first weekend I was in Baltimore just happened to be Easter weekend, and the weather was glorious. After exploring the northern and eastern parts of the Inner Harbour on my first day, on the second day we walked to Federal Hill on the southern part of the Inner Harbour.

On the way we came across some volleyball courts at the base of the hill which I thought was pretty cool!

The views from the top of Federal Hill are pretty cool, looking back across downtown:

And to Harbour East:

And past the American Visionary Arts Museum to Fells Point and Canton, and the Domino Sugars factory which can seen from everywhere!

Also a pretty good view of Johns Hopkins hospital, where N works:

Still happy to be reunited :)

Notice anything different about the flag?

On Easter Sunday we walked north for my first glimpse of Mount Vernon. Easter egg hunts in full swing:

Then we came home and I made hot (cross) buns! The monster rising...

Hard at work:

The finished product:

Yum yum!

The next installment coming soon!

Baltimore Part 3: The beginning

I've been having a hard time knowing where to start in telling you all about my time in Baltimore so far. I can't believe I've actually been here for two months already! Only one month until I go home! So I thought I would let my scrapbook, which is much more up to date than my blog, lead the way.

I flew out from Heathrow just before Easter, and the journey was incredibly smooth. My train was on time, my bus was on time, I had no problems going through security, and my flight was comfortable: good food, alright films. Mind you, eight hours is loooonnggg!!! I feel I have no right to say that after N flew to Australia recently, but still, for me an eight hour flight is four times longer than any flight I've taken before and it felt like a long time. By the time I was queuing at the American border I was tired (as far as I was concerned it was 1am, not 8pm!), hot and really needed to pee, and I was super-excited to see N in the arrivals hall. I knew it had all been too smooth to be true. And I was right. As soon as it became clear that I was staying for a full 90 days I was whisked away to a room to be quizzed about my intentions. Stress!

The weirdest thing was that the guy kept telling me not to worry, I hadn't done anything wrong. I was all like "Yes, I know I haven't done anything wrong, so why are you ruining my joyous arrival?!" Not that I said that out loud of course, but it was confusing. I understand though, most people don't have the luxury of a three month holiday half way around the world right! Anyway, it all turned out alright, he looked N up, and within a couple of minutes was off to the arrivals hall to quiz him too! So it wasn't too long before we were in the apartment, with me freaking out about being so far from home!

I got over that pretty quickly though, look at me the next day:

Happy! We went for a walk around the Inner Harbour in the early April sunshine. Busy, but lovely.

We also made my first visit to Barnes and Noble, an awesome bookshop situated in an old power station.

Tune in soon for the next installment!

Baltimore Part 2: Tour of Baltimore Sights so far

This second part of my introduction to the time I've spent in Baltimore will give you a guided tour around the sights I have discovered so far.

Just up the road from our apartment, just north of downtown, is Mount Vernon, the historic district of the city. Here you can see the Peabody Institute and library, described as a cathedral for books; the Basilica of the Assumption (the Catholic Cathedral); the Enoch Pratt free library, and Baltimore's Washington monument, the oldest in America. Mount Vernon is also home to several restaurants which I can't wait to try, and some really interesting architecture.

City Hall was one of those sights that I actually had to be shown. Despite seeing several signs for it I never did manage to find it by myself! Tucked into a green square a couple of blocks north of the water, I don't really know how I missed it! It kind of makes me think of Cardiff City Hall in a way:

Down the road, east of City Hall, is the Shot Tower which is pretty fascinating. They used to pour lead down through holes in the tower to make bullets! I think this is probably the closest I've got so far, but it would be cool to visit properly:

A ten minute walk south from home, in the opposite direction to Mount Vernon, is the Inner Harbour. This is the tourist heart of Baltimore, and gets very busy on a sunny day, but I love being so close to the water. The Constellation is one of several ships in the Inner Harbour that can be toured:

Walking south along the western edge of the Inner Harbour, past the Science museum, you get to Federal Hill:

From here you get a great view of the Inner Harbour. The tall buildings on the right are downtown:

And Johns Hopkins hospital on the hill, where N works:

If you walk east along the water from the Constellation you can have a go on these paddle boats, sheltered by Baltimore's world trade centre and with the National Aquarium in the background, one of Baltimore's main attractions:

Continuing past the aquarium you come to Barnes & Noble, a great two-storey bookshop based in an old power plant. I actually ended up in there "accidentally" today when I went for a rainy walk... It's very easily done you know!

If you continue to walk east along the waterfront you eventually reach Fell's Point (about a half hour walk from home), another quaint little area with lots of bars and restaurants to try. And an amazing gelato place which I'm sure I will talk about on more than one occasion in coming posts!

The furthest point I have reached so far is Canton Park, about an hour's walk from home east along the water, and well worth the walk:

As a further point of interest, I couldn't finish a post about the sights of Baltimore without mentioning Domino Sugars, a factory which is difficult to lose sight of if you're walking along the water. That sign must be huge!

Check back soon to find out what I've been doing with myself out here, other than just wandering around!

Baltimore Part 1: Apartment Tour

Welll helllooo there!

Yes, yes, I know, it's been months. Two and a half months if we're going to be picky about it. And sooooo much has happened in that time. In March I did have a good excuse. I was just so busy I didn't have time to write. But to be honest since then I have had no excuses, except that I just didn't know where to start!

Let's summarise, and maybe at some point, if you're good, I'll expand on the subjects:

• In the middle of March I took a swift tour of the UK
• On 21st March I became a doctor!
• At the beginning of April I came to Baltimore, MD, USA!

I have now been in Baltimore for 36 days (that's reassuring actually, I still have 52 days until I go home, so it's not going too fast. Apparently three months is a long time!)

So I thought I would start simply with a tour of our apartment, located in the heart of downtown Baltimore. I really love it. It's lovely and spacious without being way too big for us like our house in Cardiff (which although I also loved I could never be bothered to clean due to its size and copious amounts of excess stuff, largely - or entirely? - my fault. I'll say one thing for going abroad, it definitely forces you to leave your clutter behind!) 

Let's start the tour with the living room. Yes we are lacking in a sofa, the one big thing left on the list I think (unfortunately America doesn't do furnished apartments...):

The living room and dining room are open plan, and there's a breakfast bar into the kitchen which is great:

The kitchen isn't huge, but the appliances are! I'm not sure if you can really tell from the photo, but the oven and sink (and fridge which you can't see) are ginormous!

The bathroom is a bathroom, but you know, I didn't want to miss anything out (except the hallway, which isn't very interesting. Yes, even less interesting than the bathroom!)

The bedroom is soooo huge considering we have no furniture except for a futon matress (kindly donated by Richard and Mel, thanks guys! It really is very comfortable!), and therefore isn't really very interesting either:

But the best part of the whole apartment is this little pocket of genius:

WALK-IN WARDROBE!!! Surely every girl's dream!

So that's it, our lovely little apartment, I hope you like it! A few people were asking for pictures of the view out of the window, so you can see them here (if you're friends with me on Facebook!)

World Thinking Day 2012

Each year on the 22nd of February, Girl Guides and Girl Scouts throughout the world take the time to time to think about all of the other Girl Guides and Girl Scouts around the world (that's over 10 million in 145 countries, in case you were wondering), on the birthday of the founders of the movement Lord Robert and Lady Olave Baden-Powell. It is also a brilliant opportunity to raise money for the World Thinking Day Fund.

This year, our Division chose to celebrate by climbing a hill to watch the sunrise, having a cooked breakfast in a local village hall, followed by another walk after breakfast. This was also a perfect way to reflect on this year's theme for World Thinking Day: "Together we can save our planet."

Consequently, I was up at 5.30am yesterday morning, and by 6am I was driving through the fog to see the sunrise. This is a more accurate reflection of what we saw:

but it was a great idea anyway! There were great views over to the mouth of the river Axe:

(yeah, alright, you'll just have to believe me, I'm sure its amazing on a sunny day!). And we saw the hut where the man responsible for lighting the beacon used to sit:

After official sunrise time had come and gone we walked on, for I think about an hour, to our breakfast destination. Unfortunately there had been some technical hitches, but the Trefoil Guild ladies did an excellent job of managing to cook everything despite a faulty oven! In the meantime we learnt about Thinking Day, I got roped into reading a poem about Nature, and then we remade our promises. When we finally got breakfast, 3.5 hours after getting up, it tasted awesome! Two sausages, two hash browns, baked beans and bacon:

Plus OJ + tea, yum yum yum :D  Suitably refuelled, we were soon off on another walk, 1 mile for the Rainbows and some Brownies, 2 miles for the Guides and some other Brownies. Spring is in the air!

Considering we live in such a rural area, some of the kids obviously don't get out much, which is a shame. Some of them were super-excited about mud! And we had to stop so they could paddle in the stream! This is what is so great about Guiding, we give these girls opportunities to experience such simple things that they wouldn't otherwise have access to, for whatever reason. And by getting out and about and experiencing nature, hopefully they are more likely to want to look after it in the future!

On that note, the weather is fabulous here today, so I'm off out to enjoy it by taking a long walk with the dog!

Oh yeah, on a side note, we also spent some time delivering leaflets for the Guide coffee morning and jumble sale next Saturday. If you have anything you would like to donate to be sold, or if you would like to come along and buy cake and jumble, get in touch and I will give you more details!

Pancakes All Round!

Today I discovered one of the many benefits of having submitted my thesis: it allowed me to spend the whole day slowly making my way through an entire batch of pancakes!

This may come as a surprise to those of you who know how hard I've worked the past year to get to a healthy weight. But I reckon (a whole batch of) pancakes can be part of a healthy diet, just look at how much fruit I've eaten today!

I started with two banana and chocolate spread pancakes for breakfast, yum yum!

Lunch was the best. One with Double Gloucester, red onion and tomato, so good with all the melty cheese:

Then I sauteed some apples with butter, sugar and cinnamon in the microwave, and had them in a pancake for dessert with maple syrup from actual Canada. Terrible photo, quite a fail pancake, but sooooo tasty!

I had tuna pasta bake for dinner, cos, you know, proper food is good for you... But then I had the last pancake for dessert, also pretty awesome! With toffee yogurt and blueberries :)

In other news, I found out the date for my PhD viva today, eeks!

Hope you've all had a happy pancake day! What's your favourite pancake topping?

Freedom!

Hi there!

Long time no blog! I guess while I was writing my thesis the last thing I wanted to do was sit at my computer and write some more. Well, I come bearing good news: on Thursday I submitted my thesis!

There is over a month before I will have my viva, where I have to meet my examiners to defend my work. You would think I would feel completely liberated and relaxed now right? That was certainly how I expected to feel! Alas, that is not the case. In fact I felt more panicked yesterday than I have done in a long time! While I was writing I made sure to suppress all worries concerning finding a job, money, going to America, but unfortunately over the last couple of days these things have hit me with a vengeance. And of course now that I have so much time on my hands, I can easily spend a lot of time "thinking", and that is not necessarily a good thing.

So it turns out that this is a very confusing time! It has also been pointed out to me that I have been studying for the last twenty years, and I always had the next thing lined up. Straight from school to uni, uni to PhD. I have never had a career plan. Up until now this hasn't been a problem. In fact it is still not a problem. It means my options are open. I must keep reminding myself of these things.

And now I need to find some stuff to do to stop myself from spending the next month "thinking". I have made a list, which I turned into a mind-map, with colours, in the hope I would find it more inspiring! I'm a gal who knows how to have a good time, am I right?! hehe! I have some trips and projects up my sleeve. But I'm open to suggestions! Hopefully having more time should mean more blogging!

If you've taken the time to sit and read this, please please do leave a comment. What would you do if you had a month to fill? How do you think I should entertain myself over the next month?