Day 1-2 of my aunt's trip

On Saturday I picked my aunt up at BWI. She flew in from Grand Rapids to spend a few days (including my bday) with me. I have not done much sightseeing this assignment so now that she is here, we are going to go to a bunch of places that we have not been before.

We started out by going to Baltimore's Hard Rock Cafe which is located at the Inner Harbor. I had these fantastic southern spring rolls. This kind of appetizer is my new obsession at restaurants and the Hard Rock delivered some good ones. I also enjoyed how they were plated!

After the Hard Rock Cafe, we walked a bit down the pier and waited for the water taxi. I have wanted to ride this thing since last summer so I am so glad that we did it. We ended up waiting awhile for it because only one was running (that could be due to the fact that it was only 40 degrees)! While we were waiting, we snapped some pictures of ourselves and snapped pictures for a lot of other people. Too bad we didn't charge a fee- we would have been rich.

view of Inner Harbor from water taxi deck

Anyways, the water taxi was pretty fun. It was a little chilly, but it was a cheap way to get out on the water and see the harbor. We used it more for sightseeing, but it wouldn't be too bad to use as an actual taxi either!

We rode the taxi to Baltimore's Harbor Place where my favorite MD gift shop is. Everything in the store has crabs on it. Everything is so cute and funny that I had to see if there was anything else that I couldnt live without. I ended up getting a magnet for myself and a little something for my niece and nephews.

After that we headed for my apartment but stopped to see a giant pineapple sitting atop a building on the way home. My aunt likes to go and see the weird (and free) things an area has to offer. She introduced me to the website: roadsideamerica.com which has links to many of these things. I love it; however Kraig wishes that my aunt would have kept this to herself!

On saturday night, we just lounged around the apartment for the rest of the evening, played with Baxter, and planned the rest of our week.

On Sunday, i was going to take my aunt to the NIH where I work, but they changed around the visitor's entrance and being the weekend, I did not know how to get her in. So, instead, we went to Trader Joes, Target, drove around Bethesda and Silver Spring, and went to see one of her "roadside america" destinations while we were in Silver Spring.

There we visited a giant acorn gazebo which suppsedly resembles the type of lawn art that used to be prevalent in the early days of Silver Spring. it was actually pretty cool, but I am pretty sure most neighborhood associations would shoot that down as lawn art these days.

In the evening, we met up with Shannon and her husband, Anish for dinner. My aunt works with Shannon's mother and has known Shannon throughout her life. We actually found out that their apartment is across the street from the giant acorn! For dinner we ate at a Mexican restaurant called Mi Rancho. The restaurant was really good and my food was really good. Shannon and Anish were both really nice people too. Supposedly Shannon and I have met before when we were 16 but neither of us really remember that. I am glad that it wasnt just me that didn't remember! Since they were both so cool (they travel a lot and have interesting sounding gov jobs) I wish I would have gotten to know them sooner while I was out here!