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Charlottesville

June 25, 2009 in Public Introspection | 2 comments

I will note that this post is being done somewhat hurredly on a public terminal in the lobby of Alderman Library at The University of Virginia.  I’ve got some interesting thoughts percolating on this town and this university, but I think they need to ferment a little longer, so this post will just be a recap of the past few days of travel.  More profound thoughts (perhaps) will follow in a later post.

Monday was spent in Washington DC.  We took the MARC train from Baltimore to Union Station.  It cost the family a total of $72 in tickets, so I am not sure if we came out ahead in dollar terms, but we did miss traffic and parking and general hassle.  The real reason we did it, though, was to ride the train, which Eleanor loves.  Too bad she slept most of the way back.  DC was well, like most of the other times I’ve been to DC — hot, lots of walking, and time at Natural History and Air and Space.  I like the city a lot.  I like those museums a lot,  but it’s hard to get beyond them sometimes, especially if you’re only there one day with people who haven’t been there before.  I will say Eleanor did love the dinosaur bones and all the rockets.  That was worth everything, right there.

Tuesday was our last full day in Baltimore, with Sarah’s parents leaving that afternoon.  Our morning was spent shopping and running errands while the grandparents got a few final hours in with the grandkids.  We ate lunch at Nicks Fishhouse, right on the harbor, behind an air conditioning refurb shop.  I think there may be a coorelation between food quality and proximity to heavy industry.  Nick’s was great.  Sarah had wonderful fish and chips, her dad had great tilapia, and I ate some wings (not in the mood for fish) dusted in Old Bay.  Sarah’s parents left for the airport right after lunch.

Wednesday we got up and packed, then drove down here to Charlottesville.  We spent last night at a friend of Sarah’s (who has three girls for Eleanor to play with), ate some Christian’s pizza, and had Bodo’s for breakfast this morning.  Now those two are off to Tennessee and I’ve wandering around UVA waiting for my friend to get off work.  Tomorrow our guy’s weekend begins.

Baltimore

June 21, 2009 in Uncategorized | No comments

We’re at Sarah’s sisters house in Baltimore, about a third of the way through our vacation.  We spend two fun days in Richmond, visiting with a friend from graduate school and his family.  Eleanor played with his two children, we grilled out, and did fun kid stuff.

We arrived here on Friday, just in time to eat dinner (crab cakes, of course) and head to my neice’s dance reciatal.  I’ll admit my initial scowl at being told tickets were $15 each, but it turned out to be lots of fun.  The recital had a “Night at the Museum” theme, combined with a cool multicultural vibe and a series of dances about Moses.  Eleanor was enthralled, despite staying up way past her bedtime.

We haven’t ventured out too much otherwise — a trip to the grocery store, brunch today after church.  The moms all cooked a great father’s day meal for us tonight.  This afternoon we visited Normals, a great used bookstore here in a somewhat sketchy part of town.  Another trip out (to buy beer, which can be purchased on Sunday from bars that also have their package license) yielded a nice drive past Johns Hopkins and Loyola.  Tomorrow we’re taking the train into DC.

I’ve seen more of Baltimore on this trip than I have any other time we’ve visited.  As I told my brother in law last night, Baltimore kind of scares me (and I’ve never even watched The Wire).  Many of these row home neighborhoods are run down and menacing.  But there are wonderful neighborhoods, too, like they one my in laws live in, with homes dating from the 1930′s nestled under trees.  There’s also a funky counterculture here, at least there seems to be, judging by the flyers in the bookstore and the emerging neighborhood around where we ate brunch (a packed place called Clementine).  I’m sure if we lived here there would be lots of cool stuff around, but then we’d have the school system to deal with.

A good vacation so far, with lots more to come.