You may wonder if all I do is leave my family and party with my friends (since I just did that last weekend and am doing it again this weekend), but I actually think I did a pretty good job of balancing it out this time.
After picking up the girls after work and dropping them off at Nana’s house, I hopped on a MARC train to Baltimore. This is a very unimportant part of the story except for 2 points:
- My experience on MARC was about 100 times better than my ride on Amtrak last weekend–the one that turned into a sweaty, 9-hour ordeal.
- A stranger gave me $5, because I didn’t know I needed cash to ride the train, and told me not to worry about paying her back. Did you know that kind of thing still happened?! I didn’t.
I was in Baltimore to meet an old friend from college and go to Kaskade’s Freaks of Nature show. Don’t worry if you don’t know who Kaskade is. Most of my readers aren’t 18 wearing neon bootie shorts and half shirts, so you’re really not in the right demographic.
2. Check out the half shirt behind us
Angela and I grabbed a quick bite at Alewife Public House (truffle mac ‘n cheese? yes, please!) and proceeded to 1st Mariner Marina for the show.
After a 3 hour techno trance, that left us covered in other people’s sweat and beer, we headed back to the hotel, forgot we were in our 30s, and decided that we needed to go out.
We took a cab to Fells Point and ended up at a sketchy club called The Get Down (‘nuf said). We weren’t there long because it was late, but I managed to learn some important things before going to sleep:
- cab drivers in Baltimore come up with their prices based on how they’re feeling that moment
- regardless of how classy B-more is starting to look, it’s still very sketchy in most areas (thus the nicknames Bodymore and Murderland)
- bathrooms aren’t really all that necessary when you have alleys and trees (I’ve never witnessed so many people urinating in public in my life)
- my hair does not look good after sweating, getting rained on, and then sweating again (who knew?!)
Since Baltimore is less than 40 miles from DC, you may be wondering why I took the train. For one thing, traffic is miserable and the train is an excellent way to avoid it. But the real reason is that Dave and the girls were going to drive up this morning so that we could hit up Port Discovery, the Baltimore Children’s Museum. The DC Children’s Museum has been closed and under construction at a new location for years, so we make the trip to Baltimore pretty regularly.
The museum was packed, and the girls were hyped up on ice cream– ready to take over the world. Port Discovery is three stories high with a giant climbing structure in the center.
There’s a diner, a grocery store (both with fake food, of course), and a long list of other interactive areas. It’s hard to keep track of the kids while they race from one part of the museum to the next.
At one point, I heard my name coming from somewhere up above and noticed that Zana had run up to the next floor all by herself. I ran after her, took a seat near a window and noticed this lovely scene outside the museum. Oh, Baltimore…
The museum gives parents and kids matching wrist bands so that nobody steals anyone’s kid (or leaves with the wrong one– they do all start to look alike in there). If you’re planning on visiting, I should warn you that the noise is pretty overwhelming in the museum. At one point, I said something to Dave like “can you imagine if we got locked in this building? I would die.” And Dave replied with, “yeah, but they’d think it was the best thing that ever happened.”
We stayed at the museum for about 2 hours and decided to get a family membership on the way out. There aren’t many places the girls love more than Port Discovery, so I’m sure we will be back a few times this year.
Plus, we want to go camping at some point and I think seeing so many people peeing outside could really help to get them ready for that. No?
I’m going to think twice about wearing flip flops in Baltimore from now on … 🙂
LMAO!!! Love it! Pefect summary of our night, plus some gorgeous pics of your girls! XOXO