One Night in Baltimore

Like Altoona, Baltimore was a slightly random, baseball inspired stop on our tour.

We left DC bound for Dulles and the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Centre.  Steven was like a kid in a candy store, I'll share more details in a full post about the Air & Space museums.  But any museum that includes a real deal space shuttle

and blackbird (you might recognise the plane and the hangar from Transformers 2, I watched the video on how they made that part of the movie about 5 times totally fascinated)

it's enough to get any boy excited :)

From there it was onward to Baltimore, a relatively short trip...about 100kms.

First stop before finding our accomadation was a Charm City Cakes drive by.  I love the show and couldn't resist checking out the building in real life.

Unfortunately I didn't bump into Chef Duff and (not surprisingly) you are only allowed in by appointment.

But it was still fun to cruise past, peer in the (very tinted) windows and see the building and plethora of delivery vans.

Next stop was our hotel.  It was our first hotel where we had to have 2 rooms, thankfully we managed to get them on the same floor.  Woody returned the Toyota Sierra that had kept us company for the past week and we headed out for dinner before the ball game.

We found the harbour nearby and I finally came to understand the great attraction some people have with crab.  The crab cake was seriously AWESOME and the ribs were pretty darn good too (although I'm not convinced they don't use Nigella Lawson's recipe from Nigella Bites, or perhaps she nicked it from them?).

After our delicious dinner we followed plenty of other people in pinstipes to Oriole Stadium at Camden Yards. 

We had awesome field level seats....and then it started to rain.

The start of the game was postponed but finally got a start...Steven had a mental list of the specifics he wanted to see...CC Sabathia on the mound was one of those things and we got that ticked off.

Unfortunately it rained on and off during the game so we retreated to a higher level under cover for a few innings in the middle but luckily it cleared up completely for the last few innings. 

With the Yankees up by loads the orioles fans started leaving early so Steven and Sebastian headed down closer to the fence for the last innings to see the Yankees finish up the Orioles 13-2.

Then it was home to bed before facing the 320km drive into New York City the next morning.