In Old Colts Country

So I took a trip to Baltimore this week. The primary goal of which was to take my girlfriend to see Lacuna Coil play at Rams Head Live. She's a really big fan and was uber excited when I surprised her awhile back with tickets for the show. Unfortunately it was part of a tour and they only got to play for a half hour or so. The venue was reasonable enough, tho security people were a pain and some areas had very bad viewing angles. But they did at least have a bunch of nice flatscreens around the place so you could watch those when around and about. Also the foodstand place gives refills which I didn't know at first. The lady doing the serving recognized me and gave me shit about ditching my cup. I told her I just assumed there would be price rape-age, but she was nice and gave me another Dr. Pepper free of charge.

We also fit some other things into our day and a half stay in the Inner Harbor area. We stayed at a really nice hotel, the Hampton Inn. It's a Hilton hotel so it was a bit pricey but everything in Baltimore seems to be anyway. The room was great, nice and roomy, bed extremely comfortable and good for the hot secks. The hotel staff was quite helpful and the valet man was kind enough to grab us something from the car that we forgot. We got to check out the indoor pool which was okay, except for the little kids doing cannonballs every 30 seconds and the fact that even in the deep end I could stand without my head submerging.

Places in Baltimore seem to close kind of early, so we were lucky enough to make it to the Hard Rock Cafe in Baltimore before they closed at 11. We both had delicious salads and a nice herb chicken dish. Also sample some of the alcoholic beverages and walked away with nice Martini and Hurricane glasses. Our other primary food experience was at some place called like J. Paul's. But it was pretty good, Becky had a seafood platter and I was able to chow down on a simple yummy burger and fries. Also the cool thing about this place was they give you free warm pretzels with mustard as appetizers. We checked out some shops and went out for a half hour or so on a dragon shaped paddleboat.

The other main event of the day was a trip to the aquarium. I had been hoping since we were going on a Tuesday that it wouldn't be so crowded, but it most assuredly was. There were parents and their little brats everywhere. So it was really slow going in some points, at least if you actually wanted to see something, and even more so if you wanted to take some pictures like I did. But we scoped out basically all of the place. We didn't end up making it to the dolphin show, but neither of us really cared. The general aquarium parts were all fun and I got some nice shots, but I think both of us enjoyed the Rain Forest and Australian exhibits most. They really give you a cooler feel of being in the animals environments and you have birds flying around and some open exhibits. Check out my pictures from our trip.

There were some problems on the trip, primarily crappy traffic, crappy Baltimore streets, Crappy Parking Garages and way too much walking, but I still had a really good time and I think Becky did too. There was also the side benefit of me having taken two days off work, so I had that going for me, which was nice.