Baltimore Part 8: Pirates in Fells Point, arrrrr

Our Friday nights became fun Fridays pretty quickly after N went back to work, first an evening of fun and games and Chinese food, then the following week I went and met N and his colleagues for a drink after work in Fells Point. Fun times and my first turkey burger with sweet potato fries (yummy!) was followed by a beautiful evening walk home all along the water's edge. We even spotted a Welsh flag!

And we had our first taste of Pitango Gelato, sooooo good! This was spicy chocolate and passionfruit:

The next day saw us head back to Fells Point for Privateer Day. This was a fun pirate-themed day with lots of dressing up and boats and pirate bands!

Me with some pirates, enjoying the band:

Proper pirate costumes:

Lady pirates:

Even the animals made the effort!

This dude was the coolest:

Boats:

The next day we hopped on the bus up to the Johns Hopkins Homewood campus for their spring fair, but it was tipping it down with rain and unfortunately by the time we got there it was a washout and everyone was packing up, so no pictures from there I'm afraid. But we still managed a nice little outing by heading to a Barnes & Noble and browsing the books for a while, before grabbing some lunch in the Starbucks and catching the next bus home. Hopefully we'll make it to the fair next year, sounded like fun!

Baltimore Part 7: Exploring Baltimore

My second full week in Baltimore was probably defined by exploring and finding my feet in the city. We took a walk to see City Hall, which amazingly I hadn't managed to find by myself. On the way we came across this unusual door:

And had a pretty good view of the Shot Tower:

Reminds me of Cardiff City Hall for some reason, maybe the dome?

War Memorial:

Funky horse:

Another day I took myself back up to Mount Vernon for some more exploring. Love this view of the Washington Monument through the trees:

And treeless:

Also in this week N took me up to Johns Hopkins Hospital to see where he works. Not many pictures because it was raining, but this is the view of downtown from the top:

Come back next time to read about ice cream and pirates!

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!