Camden Yards - Baltimore Orioles (Opening Day!)

Our one day in Baltimore was a busy one! We had to check out of our little house we had rented that morning so we straightened everything up there and got ready to head out. Nothing like setting an alarm on vacation! 

We had tickets to the aquarium on Thursday so I had called and moved them to Friday when the game got  moved. That was to be our first stop. We had a quick 30 minute drive into the city and had no problems and no traffic getting there (which was weird because it should have been rush hour). 

We found parking super easy and started our day out. We walked towards the Inner Harbor. The Aquarium was super cool and much more enjoyable than the Atlanta Aquarium. We saw all kinds of different creatures like poison dart frogs, sharks, dolphins and fish from the rain forest. We even saw a parrot! We spent most of the morning in the aquarium and then decided to head over to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch. Our kids were impressed with Tom Petty's guitar and Elton John's jacket (they even had Madonna's short, sequined shorts, ha!) I don't think the food is ever anything to write home about in those restaurants, but it was still fun!

After waiting to eat and all that, we were about two hours from the game starting and decided to walk down towards the ball park. The Orioles played the NY Yankees for opening day. We saw lots of Yankees fans, but there was a sea of orange in Baltimore that day.  Dillon's mom was born in Baltimore so they are die-hard Orioles fans and I was really looking forward to seeing Camden Yards for the first time. Lucas was representing for Russ at this game and wore his Yankees hat. 

The closer we got to the stadium, the more people started to come in. Bars around town were filled to the brim with people celebrating opening day. We went into the stadium and tried to hold on tightly to each other because the crowds were overwhelming! Dillon wanted an Orioles hat and the line to the store was out the door, probably 75 people deep. We finally found a hat shop and Dillon picked out a hat only to find out later that he had just grabbed one and it was a Youth hat! :( Everyone was shoulder to shoulder and I pulled out our tickets so we could find our seats and then get food. I went to the wrong section and we finally learned that we needed to be on the next level. That reduced some of the tension and crowds, but it was still full! We found our seats and watched the opening ceremonies. The Orioles fans were not having anything to do with the Yankees and boo'd them at every turn. This upset Charlie because she said "You know, they're people too." She tried to clap for both teams over the boos for the Yankees, God love it. 

Dillon waited for a little bit and then went to find our pins that we're collecting from each stadium. To get the pins and two beers took a little over an hour! I went to get the kids nachos and hot dogs and missed almost 2 innings. The crowds were just SO intense! We left a little early from the game so we could miss the traffic and get to our car. The Orioles won (7-6) in a close, close game. 

I loved Camden Yards and want to return on a day that isn't so crowded. We didn't really get a chance to see much of the stadium or partake in their specialties. Dillon read that you can find a good crab cake in the stadium, but we'd never be able to find where that was exactly and we'd have to wait over an hour to get it! 

On our way out of Baltimore, we drove by Dillon's mom's house where she was born and grew up in until she was in about 1st grade. It was a sweet little neighborhood and we got to see where she went to school and hear about a lot of memories and friends that she had. 

All in all, I would go back to Baltimore! I'd like to spend some more time at the Inner Harbor and at the stadium with a smaller crowd. Since this is Dillon's team, I'm sure we'll return soon, I'll just make sure it's not on Opening Day! 

Pepperoni's for breakfast

Luke got pooped on by a bird! Good luck!

It was a sold out game!

 

Nationals Stadium - Washington Nationals

 We're back from a 5 day excursion to DC & Baltimore! I'm going to split this into two blogs just to document each ballpark even though we spent about 3 days in DC and only one in Baltimore. We started out our trip in Chilhowie, picking up Dillon's mama, who joined us! Chilhowie is a little bit closer to Washington DC, so it wasn't a bad drive up on Monday. 

We left Monday morning and headed up I-81. We were able to drive through Radford and see my alma mater. A lot had changed with new buildings and apartments for the students, but a lot was still the same! 

We stopped for lunch in Woodstock, Va. at a little sandwich shop. It was a nice break and we were able to stretch our legs for a bit. After lunch, our GPS took us through DC and we were able to get a sneak peak at all of the museums, monuments and sites. We went past the White House, the Capital and the Washington Monument. The kids were ecstatic and were so excited. We arrived at our little house in Crofton, MD which was about halfway between Washington & Baltimore. We were a 15 minute ride from the metro station and 30 minute drive from downtown Baltimore. It was perfect! 

Our first day, we didn't have any baseball games to attend, so we focused on all of the Smithsonian museums on the Mall. The museums don't open until 10:00 AM so we had time to get into the city. We traveled to the New Carrolton metro station and learned how to get our cards and how to get into the city and transfer trains. Fortunately, on our first day, we could take the orange line directly to the Smithsonian! The weather was perfect and sunny. A great day to walk around. Our first stop was at the Natural History Museum. We saw the elephant in the front entryway and made our way to the Hope diamond. While the Hope diamond was extremely impressive, the kids were really impressed with the meteorite that you could touch and the minerals and gemstones. We checked out some other exhibits, including the fossils! This museum didn't have timed entry so it was a little overwhelming with tons of people. We had lunch in the cafe and decided to move to the next museum. Our next stop was the National Gallery where we looked at artwork! We saw a Leonardo painting, Reubens, Monets, all of it! This was a little less exciting for the kiddos and they wanted to see the more contemporary work which was in the building over from the one we were already in. 

We did have timed entry into the Air & Space museum so we headed out of the National Gallery a little early and walked across the Mall. After we found the entrance, we went in and saw pieces from space ships and an astronaut suit. We learned about the planets and the history of air travel! They also had a X-wing star fighter from the Star Wars movie. There was so much to see, I think our brains were all a little fried and overwhelmed. It was so much to take in. We left to catch the Metro back to MD and have some dinner and relaxing time as we had another big day coming up. 

On Wednesday we had timed reservations to the National Zoo. We underestimated the amount of time that everything would take and didn't make it to the zoo until almost 10:00. Our baseball game started at 1:00 that day so we had a limited time frame to see the zoo and unfortunately, we weren't able to see all of it. We did hit the highlights though and saw the panda bears (which is now Charlie's favorite animal! It has outranked unicorns which is a BIG deal!) We also saw elephants and flamingos. After a quick walk through, we decided to head back to the metro to catch it over to the Nationals Park. We had to switch lines so a quick look at the map and we were off. Even though I stressed over the metro, we all did pretty well and it only took a short time to get over there. When we got off the metro, we went above ground, turned left and we were 2 blocks from the stadium! We made it in easily, had lunch at the Brew House which was right above our seats and made our way down to start the game. 

The Nationals played the (guess who) Tampa Bay Rays! This makes the 3rd time that we've seen the Rays play! We saw them in Tampa last year and then they played the Reds when we were in Cincinnati last summer. It was a 1:05 game start and the stadium was easy to maneuver. Hardly any crowds and everything was easily accessible! We started out in a sunny part of the stadium and then halfway through we walked around to see what was there and stole some seats in the shaded area. We had some great hot dogs and beer. The kids enjoyed pizza and ice cream. The staples! They were celebrating the Cherry Blossom Festival and had special merchandise and picture opportunities. The Nationals got stomped by the Rays, though. (Rays: 7, Nationals: 2) We were able to stay the entire game though and it was great! 

We had been watching the weather for the next day's game in Baltimore. They were calling for severe thunderstorms in the afternoon and while we were sitting at the National's game we learned that they had postponed opening day for the Orioles to Friday, the day that we were supposed to be going home. We tried to decide what to do and we landed on staying for the game Friday and driving home afterwards. That meant an extra day to tour! 

This extra day gave us time to go back and see the things we wanted to see, but just hadn't had time to do. So Thursday morning we caught the metro back into DC and took a walking tour of the city. We saw several monuments and went to the contemporary area of the National Gallery! DC is SO huge. I don't know if I ever fully appreciated the scale of the buildings and monuments. We walked 23,000 steps on Thursday and my watch told me we walked over 10 miles! The thunderstorms held off for the day until we returned to MD that evening. 

We were all tired and worn out with our feet screaming. The next day would be an early start to head out to Baltimore for the Aquarium and Opening Day at Camden Yards! 

(For some reason, my pictures loaded backwards, so you may want to scroll from the bottom up when looking at pictures!)

    

I call this exhaustion at the Art Museum. 

Surprisingly, Charlie still had energy to bounce around!

Charlie has been learning about important women in history for Women's History Month. She's been obsessed with Ruth Bader Ginsberg & Frida Kahlo. I found this shirt for her at Target and she was thrilled when we saw this artwork in the museum!

They had a special exhibit of Phillip Guston's work. He was a contemporary artist in the same era as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. I may have studied him in school (I can't remember) but his artwork was especially interesting! All of us really enjoyed the exhibit!

The kids really got into taking pictures this trip so if you see a photo with us and one of the kids, the other kiddo is behind the lense!

She was excited to see where RBG worked! 

Where Luke does not want his picture taken at all anymore, Charlie is very hungry to be in front of the camera! HA!

Hot Dog!

Charlie & Grammy on the Metro

We got a smile out of him on camera!

Flight attendant uniforms from the '60s! Look how gorgeous.

Checking out Van Gogh!

I LOVE this picture that Dillon took. 

Charlie was a little apprehensive about riding on the Metro... it took a few tries before she felt comfortable! She kept saying "I'm just not sure I trust technology." 

Our love for Old Bay was reaffirmed in Maryland!