feeding and the fish

L. and I headed into Balmo yesterday after dropping X off at the airport and we somehow managed to successfully navigate what seemed like all of the western part of the city. (I know it’s probably not wholly true, but Baltimore is one beat down city: hardscrabble, hard working, and looks eerily similar to the Wire on all fronts.) I’d found a place to eat an early lunch, the One World Café, at the edge of Johns Hopkins University. I watched as L. managed to completely devour a huge pile of powder sugar-dusted French toast and half of my fries – I feed her, often, I don’t know what was going on. We walked the inner harbor later, got way too hot for my comfort, spent some time in a really bad Barnes & Noble (packed, bad selection, nowhere to sit), and eventually headed out for some ice cream at Vaccaro’s in Little Italy. I’d found the Italian bakery on visit last summer and decided we had enough time to kill until our 6pm Aquarium entry to grab a little something. Rarely do you come across a regular gelato that can’t be sucked down in a few minutes. A word of general warning: if the basic option on the menu is a regular and the afterthought is a small, get the small. We did the regulars and found they’re easily enough for three people to dig at while sitting around a table mesmerized by the sheer volume of sweets. We both made it almost half-way through before turning ourselves into the authorities and walking away beaten and embarrassed. I noticed they offer an all-you-can-eat dessert buffet on Monday nights after 8pm for $15.50 – the thought is almost too much for me…

My summer tourist-aquarium plan didn’t really blossom. I mistakenly figured that if we got timed tickets at the end of the day then we’d manage to see everything with only a smaller throng of summer families about the place. You’d think that by 6 or 6:30 all the kids would be screaming for dinner and ice cream and they’d need to head out to Chilli’s, the Hard Rock, or the ESPNZone, right? Well, they are hungry, they just happen to be hungry and screaming in the aquarium right next to me since ma and pa just spent $125 for the family to see the fishies…and they’re going to see the damn fish come hell or high water. Needless to say, and as a second general warning, if the venue is still selling timed tickets until 6:45pm then there will be packs of visitors right up until that point. I know, it should be obvious, but I fell for it. We saw the dolphin show, the rays, the sharks, and most of the basics – it wasn’t as bad as I might make it sound; you know about me and people.

We made a quick stop at Vaccaro’s on the way out of the city for some coffee (to get me through the late drive back to Virginia) and a small (a SMALL) bag of luscious Italian cookies.

Thunder’s rolling in the afternoon.

t