Showing posts with label Baltimore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baltimore. Show all posts

Saturday, September 20, 2008

With the Fishes at the Baltimore Aquarium

This fish has some serious personality, not something you hear a lot to describe a fish. The fish resides at the Baltimore Aquarium. Every time someone would go up to his/her tank with a camera, the fish would swim right up and pose. It was hilarious.

I was at the Baltimore Aquarium because, my work decided to spend the day there for our biannual team day. We spent the morning having a meeting in the huge building owned by Catholic Relief Services. When we arrived one of my work mates joked that she was amongst her people. (She's Catholic.) My first thought was that her people liked to put my people on medieval contraptions and then burn them alive, but I figured she wouldn't really want to hear about that.

After what was a boring (and undoubtedly useless meeting that will never be followed up on), we traipsed through the depressed Baltimore streets to gorge ourselves on plates of pasta at Amicci's in Little Italy. I tried not to think about what Chris's friend, the restaurant health inspector, said about Little Italy restaurants. The food wasn't bad in that cheap, plentiful, Americanized-Italian sort of way.

As for the aquarium. It was pretty good, not as good as the one in Monterrey, but worth a trip.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Fells Point and the Weirdness of Baltimore

Baltimore doesn't look so weird in the photo, I know, but it's an odd city. The first time Chris and I went there, we went to a street with a bunch of bars on it. In the course of about 20 minutes, we saw three drunken brawls break out.

This trip was a little more chill. We stayed in Fells Point on a very quiet night. This time there were bars, but no brawls. The odd thing about Baltimore is that you never really know what you are going to get and it always seems just a little bit sad.

Fells Point is a nicer area than most. Much of Baltimore feels like a run down industrial city, way past its prime. They have urban renewalized much of the harbor area, so now it is filled with cheesy tourist bars and chains. Not sure which is worse to tell you the truth.