Well I am back from Baltimore now. Louise joined me on Thursday and as there were no relevant talks on the last day of the conference we went to the aquarium for the day on Friday. That was really fun and it is a pretty good aquarium. We saw the dolphin show twice as I really like dolphins and went around the Australia exhibit they are currently showing.
We had a really nice meal that evening at the Capitol Brewing Company and I found one of the nicest beers I have ever tasted! It was called Fuel and was made from coffee and chocolate among other things. It was quite strong but very nice, I couldn't find any to buy to bring home though... Saturday we took the train down to Washington DC for the day.
We paid for a day pass on the tour bus and started off at the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. I was amazed that is was free entry, but the queues were long and slow. Once in I had to put my bag through a security scanner, I asked the security guard if it was film safe and he didn't listen at all but took my bag off me and pushed it through. I will find out when I get them developed I guess.
The museum was pretty nice, but very crowded. We got a few souvenirs from the shop before we left. It was amazing seeing some of the things they had in there from the early space missions and the moon landings. As time was limited we didn't spend as long as I might have liked there, and didn't really have time to go around any of the other museums. Another time may be.
We then went and looked around the outside of the White House, and then around the city and stopped off at Union Station where we started. I got lots of pictures on my SLR and the Fuji F10 too. We walked down to Capitol Hill and took some pictures around there as the bus service stopped running at 4:30pm.
Sunday we just looked around the shops and went to the Baltimore Science Museum. That was pretty fun and saw quite a good IMAX film about dolphins and a planetarium presentation about Einstein where I must have really irritated Louise telling her about all the really cool bits they missed. I bought Louise a go on a Segway too which I think she really enjoyed.
Monday was our last day so we just kind of bounced around Baltimore. We had pretty much done everything there was to do there. So we took the water taxi and found out it really doesn't go anywhere as the inner harbour was about the best bit... Did a bit of last minute souvenir shopping and then went to the airport.
The airport was really tiny too. We were the only flight leaving that night. We used the cash machine type thing to check out of America I guess. It scanned our passports, did our fingerprints again and then took our photo and gave us a magic eye type receipt. We then bounced around for 2.5 hours in their tiny departure lounge until we were finally allowed on the plane. There was one duty free shop, one general shop and a cafe in there!
I am still feeling pretty tired. All that hotel food and unhealthy stuff has added a few pounds and made me feel rubbish. It is good to be back home again now, although it was quite a nice trip. It was much more expensive than I had anticipated though and I really need to hit the gym and exercise...
