Advertisement
Waiting for the Train
Grace was fascinated by these folding seats. Today started off with a cold and wet reminder that we are not in Texas anymore, and that it can still get cold in May. This morning, after a good hot breakfast at the Mount Vernon Hotel, we were awakened by a cold rainy walk to the light rail. To make things even more interesting, our rain jackets have mysteriously been left behind. Luckily, the kids' jackets were still packed and they stayed warm and relatively dry.
The 35 minute ride to the end of the line dropped us of at the Cromwell station, where we had to run to the #14 bus to Annapolis. This 1 hour tour down Gov. Ritchie Hwy ended in the heart of historic Annapolis, the capitol of Maryland. Amazingly, the entire ride only cost about $1.50 for a one-way ticket.
Luckily the rain was subdued, although the cold North wind was still bone chilling. We decided to skip the connection to our next bus which would take us to the Holiday Inn Express in favor of some food, as it was already past noon.
Walking down main street, we happened to pass by Joss Cafe & Sushi Bar, which Jessica recognized from
Food Network reviews. This was a very tight little restaurant, although they gave us a nearly private table in the back (most likely to keep our racket away from the other patrons). Food was good-we had some California Rolls and tempura and the kids had some teriyaki chicken. The highlight of the meal was Alex's encounter with a new taste. He was clearing the table of everything that looked like food within his reach, and we didn't notice the missing marble sized drop of Wasabi until his entire head turned red and his eyes were as big as quarters. After the initial punch, he was finally able to let us know that something was wrong. It didn't last too long, and he was soon interested in something else again.
Continuing down Main Street, Jessica found a t-shirt shop for some warmer clothes and then we strolled around the various shops and waterfront. Overall the 'downtown' part of Annapolis is very quaint and colonial feeling with a lot of coffee shops and other tourist traps. We found a local bus stop and headed to our hotel for the afternoon.
This ended up being a 'shelter in hotel' day for
us because of various factors including weather, lack of walkability near our hotel, and the general energy level of our family during the day. Grace was getting particularly non-compliant, so we all just took a nap before walking around Target at the nearby town center to replenish our suitcase/pantry.
This Target was a good example of finding something new even when you were planning on a routine visit to the store. The entire full-sized store was on the 3rd floor of a shopping center, and they had to deal with an interesting problem of shoppers getting their carts down to the parking garage on the 1st floor. The solution here was a second escalator system set up just for shopping carts that ran alongside the people escalator. We watched it for a minute until people started thinking we were way too fascinated and our kids were bored.
After a dinner of PB & Banana, we watched Iron Chef with the kids while eating some chocolate cookies from Target. O, and it's laundry night, so I'm sitting in the laundry room of the Holiday Inn right now (but it's free, so can't complain).
Tomorrow morning we have to
catch the last commuter bus to D.C. at 7:30am, so it will be an early evening for us.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.24s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 21; qc: 66; dbt: 0.0993s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb