(16) Baltimore, Maryland

Saturday, October 25th: I wanted to go into downtown Baltimore today, but it was wet and dreary so I cancelled those plans. I dropped Caroline and Jeffrey off at the hair salon, so Jeffrey could get a haircut, and went over to Whole Foods. I was looking around just for granola bars, apples and bananas and also found non-refrigerated milk. Milk is a hard thing to drink when you’re on the road. But cereal is a great snack to have and also nice to have when we stay at hotels that don’t have free breakfasts. But this is ultra-high temperature processed so that it stays fresh at room temperature. All you have to do is chill it before using it, which is pretty easy in the ice box at the hotel. It has a slightly vanilla taste, almost like vanilla soy milk, but has all the same nutritional facts of 2% milk. And on top of all that, it comes in juice box size, for kids to take to school! This may be the best thing I’ve found since being on the road. Because if was wet and kind of gross out, Caroline asked if people were interested in ice skating. I don’t remember the last time I went ice skating, but it was a lot of fun! Caroline, Eric, Rudy and I went to one of the local ice rinks and paid $6, that’s right $6, for admission and skates! It was the cheapest entertainment that we’ve had so far! After ice skating, we went back and Caroline showed us some pictures from the tour that she was on last year and told us more stories from the road.

Sunday, October 26th: Today we went into downtown Baltimore! Eric, Rudy and I caught the light rail from Mt. Washington around 11:30am and took it downtown. We were joined by the hundreds of Baltimore Ravens fans who were on their way to the 1:00pm football game. We were on the light rail all the way down to Camden Yards(which is where the baseball and football stadiums are) and got off the train like we were also going to the game. The Ravens were playing the Oakland Raiders(who are the football team that I root for) and luckily I was wearing my SF Giants hat so I didn’t get any slack from the crowds. We went over to Orioles Park at Camden Yards and I got caught in the ruckus of the football crowds and found myself down closer to the football stadium near the pep band! I finally found Eric and Rudy and we started to walk into Federal Hill when we got a call from Jeffrey(who is from Baltimore) and Caroline. We met up with them and walked into the Inner Harbor and Fells Point. Rudy left to meet up with Janine and they both met us for lunch later. There is a really cute area called the Broadway Market in Fells Point that we looked around before we headed out to Canton. There we had lunch at Nacho Mama’s a fun Mexican restaurant with huge quesadillas and a statue of Elvis out front. After lunch, we walked back towards the Inner Harbor, past the Flag house, where Betsy Ross made the original flag, past the Holocaust Memorial, which is pretty moving, to the Washington Memorial on the top of Mt. Vernon. Jeffrey was a fantastic tour guide and gave us hundreds of fact such as the Washington Memorial has 178 steps to the top of it and was used by ships to guide them into the harbor. He also shows us places he had lived and lots of history of the area. We got back on the train around 4:30pm which was perfect time to catch all the people leaving the Baltimore Ravens game. Unfortunately, they had beaten the Oakland Raiders… who I usually root for, but who generally suck!

Monday, October 27th: The morning was filled with phone calls. The afternoon was filled with a load in at the Lyric Theatre. We got off to a rough start because it was a little difficult to find the loading dock, but everything went well from there. They have a traditional hemp house which means that their rigging system is all hemp rope. Most theatres have steel cables for their rigging systems. It was very neat for me to watch all of this happen because it’s so rare to find an entire hemp house these days.

Tuesday, October 28th: We had one show this morning at 10:15am(19). After the show we loaded out and headed back to the hotel. Caroline, Eric, Jill, Rudy and I went out to Wal-Mart to pick up so stuff, including pumpkin carving kits. That night, Carolyn, who is also from Baltimore, had a bunch of people over for dinner and Halloween fun. We had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner with asparagus as well. On the way there, Dave, Eric and I tried to pick up some pumpkins to carve and we could only find 2 pumpkins left at the grocery store. It was a little sad, but very exciting to carve tag team on some really cool pumpkin designs! We also picked out all of the pumpkin seeds and oven toasted them with different spices and herbs. And finally, my favorite, we watched “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” on Carolyn’s HUGE TV. Carolyn made some great Halloween cookies and also had chex mix in Chinese take out boxes for us to take.