this blog entry was copied from the vacation/daytrip journal the mrs and i keep. in the journal, it's around 8 or 9 pages long.



so i set the alarm the night before for 7:00 (well, actually 6:58 but why quibble?) and woke at 7:13 with the alarm already buzzing to find the mrs was already awake. i pulled on some shorts and saw she was at the rying to render (using our dial-up connection) the driving directions to mandowmir metro subway station in blatimore—and it still wasn’t rendering i leapt in & finally just closed the browser and re-opened the page. between that, breakfast & showering, it took us longer to get underway—it was 8:30 by the time we were underway.

i actually printed 2 sets of directions, one using mapblast and another using google. sadly, the route we took required a detour that added around 15 mins. and of course, b/c we were crazed with being behind schedule, we neglected to stop for gas ($2.49/gallon—sadly, a very good price). heading into a different state, i figured we’d try to hold out on getting fueled up until the return trip, or maybe until we got back homewards.

the drive down was largely uneventful (took 2:20 or so) except for this big ol’ red truck, possibly a ford f-150 with a hand-written license plate from virginia. he was driving erratically—one moment, 60 mph; the next moment, 75+ mph. there was no consistency. plus, he drove like a man with…shortcomings…

so we finally made it to mandowmir station: it’s a mall and a subway station. we entered the mall and checked the map. it looked like the metro station was at the opposite side of the mall, so on we went.

of course, we soon learned that the station was in fact next to the mall, not within it. stupid mall maps…

we got into the station, bought our day passes and headed to lexington market.

lexington market wasn’t exactly what either of us expected—we were expecting a farmers market and it was really a food court, on both sides, east and west. so the reason we got the day passes (so we could drop off produce at the car) sorta got neutralized. but it was totally worth it for the crab cake at faidley’s. that crab cake was easily the best i’ve ever had. hell, even the mrs liked it—and she’s never been more than indiffierent at best to crab!

it was already near noon, but seeing as we were just getting there, we agreed to hold off on lunch until later in the day.

so we talked to the aquarium after hopping back onto the metro. that seemed like a good use of our time and it was close. as i was standing on line for tickets, i couldn’t help thinking that the place looked familiar. now, i knew that we’d been to baltimore before (2 years ago) but we just went to an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet. she assured me that this was the case.

well, me and my crappy memory can’t be trusted, so what the hell—maybe it was a different aquarium i was thinking of. along we went, but when we hit the 4 level display tank of rays & sharks, it all began to look familiar. when we hit the part of the display that looped us back down the 4 levels of the tank, we knew we’d been there before. how in the hell did both of us forget we’d been to the gorrammed aquarium?!

well, it was cool as hell to see anyway, and certainly deserves support. but we were a bit dispirted i think so we decided to break for lunch—it was already past 2 and hence now post-lunch rush. so we headed west along the inner harbor to the two malls.

we already scouted out possible lunch sites & more or less decided on M&S grill, a casual version of mccormick & schmick’s. you wouldn’t guess it’s more casual from the prices, though…we split a shrimp cocktail (3 but huge!) and i had a shrimp & jump lumbo crabmeat salad sandwich—very tasty! my sole complaint: the server who was otherwise excellent gave us pinot grigio that was more expensive than the house pinot grigio. seriously, $10/glass for pinot grigio? for shame!

one nice, leisurely lunch later, we headed towards the other mall and poked arouhd, scored a little very tasty ice cream (haagen-dazs’s sticky toffee pudding!) and thought about what we wanted to do next. after a little vacillating—OK, maybe a lot of vacillating—we re-entered the aquarium to see the other 2 exhibits: frogs and dolphins in the one exhibit, and the australian environment in the other.

the frog exhibit was a lot like a poison dart frog—very small, very pretty. the oz exhibit was cool as hell: there’s a 4 story waterfall that ends in the aquarium lobby! but hands down, the coolest thing was watching the 5:00 dolphin show from below—we were in front of the window into the dolphin tank when the show started. seeing the dolphins disappear out of the water only to leap back into the water, diving almost to the bottom of the tank—wow!

once we were done—and it seems the aquarium was closing when we left—we decided perhaps we were ready for dinner, or at least a beer or 3. we found an ad online for a place called max’s taproom. the description made it sound like a brewpub.

we decided to walk from inner harbor to max’s. it didn’t look too far on the map and the subway didn’t go there.

ever notice how distances always look so much shorter on the map?

we finally made it after maybe 20-30 mins walking or so. our feet were pretty tired, but when we got there, it turned out that max’s taproom is nothing more than a watering hole with no food to speak of. after sitting down & seeing no wait staff for about ten mins, we decided to try our luck elsewhere.

we wound up at shucker’s—a brasserie. the meal was OK (had my first maryland crab soup—very tasty!)and had some beer, a shiner hefeweizen that i found sorta neutral. the pasta i got, a linguine alfredo with seafood, was OK. but any desire to linger for dessert was killed when the mrs saw a mouse. yes, a rodent.

we settled the check quickly. i went to the men’s room and apparently surprised the mouse by doing so—good thing what i needed to do required only standing!

on the way out, we agreed by mutual fatigue to take a cab to the subway station. we found one in short order. that was good!

the cabbie’s inability to understand that baltimore has 2 kinds of tracked mass transit however was bad.

he dropped us off at a light rail, not subway, station. what a moron! a cop at the station was very helpful and helped us and 2 others figured out our best plan of action—take the light rail 3 stops to the nearest metro station.

with that mini-adventure done, all that was left was for us to go home. of course, that turned out to be easier said than done…

i tried to get more cigarettes at the mall, but no dice. tried the 7-11 i saw across the way. it was closed.
we got onto the highway and got onto a major east coast artery. all was well until we entered a state through which the highway crossed for no more than 5 miles, whereupon the highway went from 3 lanes to one due to road construction. now, that was frustrating. we were running low on gas and out of cigarettes entirely. i crossed a line of traffic cones to reach the last service area* in the state.

my decision to break across the traffic cones turned out to be a very good one. as we entered the next state—in which we were going to be for a good while—the idiots in that state decided that they too needed to do road work in the evening. i swear we were on that leg for at least 15 or 20 miles, although the mrs says otherwise.

it would, were i alone, have pissed me off something fierce. but i wasn’t. :>

so a drive that ought to have taken no more than 2:20 or so took 3.5+

and for as frustrated as i was with rod construction—and seriously, what mental defective says “hey! let’s turn the major east coast artery inito a parking lot overnight but not tell anyone!”—the trip was absolutely worthwhile. it was a good day and i’ll be damned if i let some road work take that away from me!

ed

*can you honestly tell me that “last service area” doesn’t sound like a great name for a band?