Baltimore Part 9: Birdwatching, flowers and shopping

The weekend after Privateer Day was also full of fun, but it seems I forgot to take any photos! On the Friday N's boss' wife took me shopping (thank you!) and I picked up some Levis jeans for $11!!! Bargainous or what?! Still amazed by this. I ate a giant salad-filled wrap for lunch, and then in the evening we all had Chinese together again. So maybe I should have bought those jeans in a size up...

Saturday saw a visit from one of N's friends from Washington DC, who he knows from their year in Japan. Coincidentally one of their other friends from that year lives in the same apartment complex as us, so we all met up and spent a fun day together. Starting in Barnes + Noble, as you do, we had sushi for lunch, then a walk up Federal Hill (although I missed this as I had to run home to change my shoes as my new ones didn't fit! :( ). Then we walked up to Mount Vernon and were very kindly treated to tea and dessert at a gorgeous bistro. We finished the day off in Brewers Art where the boys enjoyed some beer, before we walked N's friend back to the station. So it's a shame I failed to take photos that day, maybe I was distracted by my stupid shoes!

The following week N was off to Australia for a conference! But not before we'd arisen crazily early (ie. pre-6am) to go on a little pre-work birdwatching trip at Milford Mill, a little pocket of nature about a half hour walk from a Metro station.

You may ask why I was getting up so early to go birdwatching, but I think by the end of April I was already at the point of wanting to experience some nature whenever I could get it! And it was worth  it, I had fun :)

Look some trees what some birds were in!

They could see them anyway...

Pretty nature:

Time to go home. Wait for me!

A couple of days after N left I had my first interview. It went well, so I decided to treat myself to lunch at Mount Vernon's annual Flower Mart:

I picked up this tasty vegetable fried rice with chicken teriyaki which was extremely tasty, but needless to say it was huge I took some home!

Enjoyed while watching this high school band, who were very good, but unfortunately I can't remember their name.

And followed up with a traditional flower mart lemon stick:

The flowers were very pretty, and I even managed to find a house plant which is still alive 5 weeks later!

The following day I was taken on another shopping outing and was introduced to Michaels, which is an amazing craft store on the scale of a shop like PC World back home! So awesome! And then a fun afternoon playing with the cutest 18-month old, being buried in toys, meeting cats and dogs, and bathtime! So the fun didn't stop even though I couldn't make it to Aus :)

Baltimore Part 6: Discovering nature

My second weekend in Baltimore kicked off with a field trip, involving Chinese food, an overnight stay and discovering nature near Baltimore! Needless to say I was pretty exciting about this. Look, no buildings!

Look at the colours of those trees!

N's boss is a bit of a birdwatcher (he has a blog about all the birds he's seen lately here. I would especially recommend checking out the birds they saw in Australia), so we got lots of pretty birds pointed out to us, including a bluebird which was pretty cool!

My favourites were the tree swallows though. I could watch them dipping over the fields all day. Difficult to catch photos in flight, but here's some once they stopped:

And here's me!

Some of these photos look prettier in full size, check out Facebook!

Baltimore Part 5: First week

Inevitably N had to go back to work during this week, but not before we'd had a classic American cultural experience: baseball!

To fuel ourselves for this experience we went out for Japanese for lunch in Mount Vernon. I enjoyed this tofu teriyaki with rice, incredibly tasty:

Then in the evening we headed to Camden Yards baseball stadium down the road (that's the great thing about living downtown, so many things are "down the road") to watch the Baltimore Orioles take on the New York Yankees. Excitement as the Orioles take to the pitch!

Some people:

The screen:

Pitcher warming up:

So what was the verdict? Well, if you choose cheap tickets you end up sitting very high up, and if it's still early April, no matter how gorgeous the weather was during the day, you're gonna get coooollldddd.

Turkey burgers are tasty.

Baseball is slow. It was fun though, but they hardly ever hit the ball, never mind run anywhere. The Orioles were winning by quite a long way when we left after 5 out of the 9 innings, which was pretty exciting. But we looked online and it turns out they lost eventually, shame! Also I'm glad we left when we did (around 9.30pm I think, after it started at 7, this is how long it takes), because if the score is equal after 9 innings they have to keep going, and on this occasion they got to something like 11 or 12 innings! Too cold to stay that late!

If you get cheap tickets you can see our apartment building from your seat!

Actually, I can't see the building in this photo any more, but I'm sure I could see it at the time!

Other exciting things this week included these beautiful flowers which N bought for my arrival and lasted ages:

And visiting Whole Foods, which has to the be the awesomest supermarket I have ever experienced! Shame it can be a little pricey:

In the next installment I find nature!

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!