Baugher's

I have a thing for farmer's markets, I adore them, it's similar to my random obsession with steeples and spires. Rick used to work at this little farm near Baltimore and knowing of my obsession said we should go. After getting some yummy fudge (for breakfast of course) we went past all the peaches and found a petting zoo! Of course closely following my love of farmer markets and church spires is my love of cute and fuzzy things (OK, that's a lie, my love of cute and fuzzy things far surpasses just about anything else!). So I got to start the morning off with chocolate and bunnies, what more could a girl need? And after these fun but frantic days of hyper-tourism Rick had to go back to work, and I spent the rest of my vacation reading, hanging out with his family and the dogs, and watching all the fire flies in the field, sounds like a perfect break to me!

Washingtom Memorial

Right by the Peabody and on the way to Walter's was a lovely little park and the monstrous Washington Memorial. At this point though we were pretty exhausted after two fully days of walking everywhere. We were also pretty hot, sweaty, dusty, and hungry so our appreciation of this beautiful space was not all it could be.

Peabody

Running late seemed to be the theme of the day and we had very little time to get to the Peabody from the inner harbor. Rick has not traveled enough with me yet to know to be leery of some of my "great ideas." So when I said that it would take less time to walk there than to get the car out of the parking garage and drive there, he said "sure." Fast forward to a half hour later, we are still walking, and not really sure where we are but we know that the Peabody is not within site. I say we turn around and as we are walking back we see a sign for the Peabody and the Walter's Gallery, we end up getting there but have missed the scheduled tour time. Since we have nothing to lose we decided to see if we could still get in and were able to walk around one of the most amazing libraries I have ever seen. As we were walking out and I was babbling incoherently about how amazing it was, the woman at the front desk said "and the spiral staircase is through that door to your right." It wasn't anything we had planned on seeing but it was beautiful and I think it's a fitting illustration of how everything seems to work out during travel.

Aquarium fun!

It's a little difficult to get a good picture of dolphins, they move veeeeery fast so bear with me.

Big toad!

Right after this picture was taken it sneezed. It was pretty freaky to see since all it's jaw seemed to roll out of it's mouth (so you could see all those rows of teeth) and then it just went right back in.

Poor Rick. A couple weeks before the trip I started planning everything which included researching the aquarium and seeing how much tickets were (start around 20 for adults) and looking up what they had. I believe I was on the phone with him when I shrieked "they have a baby dolphin, they have a baby dolphin." After that his fate was sealed and he had to listen to all my dolphin enthusiasm for the next couple of weeks. While we did not end up seeing the dolphin show (there were some timing issues) we did get to see them swimming around and it was wonderful to watch all the playing they do and watch the baby swim in tandem with it's mom. We also got to spend some quality time with the sharks, turtles and stingrays (I never knew that their undersides look like big smiley faces). Along with our tickets we got to go to the 4-D show. Think of a 3-D movie but interactive, so when you're watching a whale come to the surface you get splashed, when you see the water snakes swimming around there are suddenly things moving around your ankles, and when they show the eels darting out of their caves you get poked in the back of the chair. Before the film started they said it was not appropriate for children that are easily excitable, Rick jokingly said we had better leave for my sake. He spent the next twenty minutes of the show holding my hand as I freaked out and then the next hour hoping it would recover from being squeezed so hard. Like I said, poor Rick!

Inner Harbor

Our view during lunch.

Old power plant, the Border's inside is beautiful and they left some of the stacks from the factory which have been turned into bookshelves.

Very cool bridge outside the aquarium!

The inner harbor is definitely the place to start any visit to Baltimore. Tons of stores, restaurants, museums and other fun sites it is also a prime time people watching location! Rick and I had been in a hurry to get to the Aquarium but after visiting with the sting rays, sharks and frogs (more on those later) we walked around a little bit and then had lunch. We're both huge sushi fans so we stopped in at Edo Sushi where the unagi nigiri was great! I think we ended up devouring a serving of edamame, a plate of yakitori, five sushi rolls and then the nigiri! Then feeling very full we got milkshakes (of course!) and walked around in a sleepy stupor. The last time I was in Baltimore we went to the science museum which was great and had a very cool photo exhibit. Unfortunately time during this visit was limited and we had to get to the Peabody library so we did not get to fully indulge at the inner harbor, but between all the sites (and the paddle boats shaped like dragons) you could easily spend a full day just in this small part of the city.