Man, what a week of getting back into the swing of things! Coming back from vacation is nice but hectic at the same time. I need to remember to ask off for the Monday or day after I get back from vacation. Needed to run errands, go to the chiropractor, grocery shop because our fridge was empty and get Andrew back into the swing of daycare and oh yeah a full work week! Our vacation was awesome and here is (hopefully) a short but sweet trip down memory lane of our Baseball Vacation!!!
View from the plane to Baltimore
Sunday August 10th Day #1:
We left for Baltimore bright and early! Our plane left at 6:10 am so we were up at 3:30 am, BLAH! Luckily we were able to stay at a hotel near the airport and take their shuttle in. Once we arrived in Baltimore, we took the shuttle over to the train station. There we took a two hour train ride to Philadelphia. I highly recommend if you ever travel on a train to travel light and/or with small suitcases. The aisle was very narrow to get my suitcase down but it was a different experience. I'm glad we tried it! Once we got to 31st Station in Philadelphia, we had lunch at Nathan's Hot Dogs. We weren't in that big of a hurry because we just had to take the Metro from the train station to our hotel. Once we got to the hotel, we just relaxed until it was time for dinner. We took the Metro downtown Philly and walked to Pete's Diner. They had a special going on that if you picked one of there main dishes, you got soup, salad, main dish and a dessert. Matt and his dad got that. Sandy, Matt's mom, and I got soup with our meal. The soup was chicken and rice which was very delicious!!! I got the hot roast beef sandwich which was okay. The meat was a little tough. After dinner we walked around town and then headed back to the hotel.
My hot beef open face sandwich from the diner.
Monday August 11th Day #2:
We took out time getting up and around, had breakfast, then got on the Metro to take it down to Citizens Bank Park for the Phillies baseball game. A dream of Matt and I's is to go to all 30 baseball parks before we die. Currently I am at 11 and Matt is at 10. We both have been to the Royals (duh!), Colorado Rockies, St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Minnesota Twins, Milwaukee Brewers, Philadelphia Phillies, Baltimore Orioles, and Washington Nationals stadiums. I have been to the Los Angeles Dodgers stadium but Matt has not. Our next baseball tour vacation would probably be Detroit Tigers, Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds. I don't think we will hit all 30 because I don't know if we would ever get up to Seattle or Canada. I would love to see the Big Green Monster at Fenway Park in Boston (Kelly you need to stay in Boston for a little longer :)
The Phillies ballpark is very "industrial". A lot of exposed beams and metal. We all shared a Philly cheese steak from Tony Luke's which was delicious! Since it was a day game, it was a very hot game. We were in the shade for the first maybe 3 innings and then it was just hot. The Phillies ended up loosing to the New York Mets 3-5. It was a good game and it was great to see a different ballpark.
The Phillies mascot, the Philly Fantatic!
We headed back to the hotel and relaxed for the rest of the night. Matt and I took a walk around downtown. The front desk suggested that we should eat N.Y. Pizza. It was very delicious!
Tuesday August 12th Day #3:
We knew we were going to take the Philadelphia Bus Tour and that it was supposed to rain that day. SO, we did as much as we could outside while it wasn't raining and then once it started raining we hopped off on one of the stops to go in the Reading (pronounced RED-ing) Terminal. We started at the Independence Visitor Center to see the Liberty Bell. When we went to see this it reminded me of the movie National Treasure! Totally wanted to watch the movie and who would of guessed it was on inside the visitor center. After the Liberty Bell, we hopped on the trolley tour and started the tour. We saw Betsy Ross' house (it is said that she made the first American flag but there is no actual proof), the National Constitution Center, Chinatown, Convention Center and Reading Terminal. It was close to lunch time and we knew it was going to rain so we stopped at the Reading Terminal.
I have to say, this was one of my favorite spots in Philadelphia. If you ever go to Philly, I recommend going to the Reading Terminal. The nice part was it was a walking distance from our hotel. We walked into the terminal and right away smelt fresh bread, saw chocolate covered everything and saw a lot of food! When we first walked in, I immediately saw a Chocolate Factory and truffles! I got myself a little treat.
Just a tiny piece of all the chocolate I saw that day!
The treat I got myself!
My lunch that day, chicken was good, mac n cheese was yummy, colesaw not so much!
We walked around some more, saw more restaurants, bakeries, grocery store, Amish section, little knick knack stores, and more restaurants. We stopped to sit down to eat. Sandy really wanted a piece of cheesecake with strawberries on it. So I walked around and found the Amish section. They had homemade pastries, breads, cakes, rolls, cookies, doughnuts and more! Smelt so good!!! I got Sandy a piece of cheesecake and also noticed they had cheesecake with pineapple on it. Once I got back to the table, told Butch about it. If you don't know Butch, Matt's dad very well, he loves pineapple!
They were happy about their cheesecake!
I walked around and found a BBQ chicken place to eat, Butch and Sandy had a philly cheesesteak and Matt had a pork sandwich with spinach on it. We walked around some more and back over to the Amish section so Butch could have his cheesecake with pineapple. This one guy was making apple fritters! It smelt so good!!! I wish I could have bottled it up but I couldn't so we bought some apple fritters lol!
Yummy pickles!
Adam from Man vs Food has came here a lot!
After being in the Terminal for a couple of hours, we hopped back on the tour.We saw the LOVE statue (which is very small), Basilica of St. Peter and Paul, Rodin Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia Zoo, "Rocky" Steps (cue music), Franklin Institute (we stopped here and toured the museum), Logan Circle, Antique Row, and ended back at the Independence Center. It was close to dinner time and we remembering seeing a diner at the Reading Terminal. We hopped back on the trolley tour, it was the last one too, and headed back over to the diner. We ate there, walked back to the hotel and relaxed for the rest of the evening.
I would have bought some flower if we weren't on vacation :)
Wednesday August 13th Day #4:
We packed up and checked out of the hotel. We walked over to the bus terminal and took a 2 hour bus ride to Baltimore! I slept a little on the bus and once we got there, man was it a beautiful day! We arrived at the bus station and took a taxi to our hotel. Checked into the hotel, freshened up and then walked down to the Inner Harbor. It was so beautiful, hearing the water and the boats and feeling the fresh air. We had not ate lunch yet, so I decided it was time to eat some fresh seafood! We ate lunch at Bubba Gump's! So delicious!!! Probably my favorite restaurant of the whole trip!!! I had Accidental Fish and Shrimp which was broiled Mahi Mahi and shrimp on a bed of rice with a lemon butter sauce and roma tomatoes! Like I said, SO GOOD!!!! We had a pretty late lunch and to kill some time before the Orioles baseball game, we walked around the harbor. There was a visitor center nearby that we walked into. A lady was painting a skyline of the harbor so I watched her for a little bit. Don't worry, I asked her if I could watch her paint. Apparently she was a famous local painter that I didn't know till we were leaving.
The inner harbor
Camden Yards
Once it got closer to the gates opening for the baseball game, we walked over the Camden Yards. This ballpark was a lot like the Phillies, very industrial, lots of exposed beams and metal. The isles were very small were the seats were, I could fit in the seat and sit down but my legs touched the seat in front of me. Butch and Matt were a little squished. Matt and I wore our Royals shirts to the game and we felt like Royalty. Everyone kept congratulating us because the Royals were in first place. It was awesome and I'm pretty sure we were the only ones wearing Royals gear. The Orioles played the Yankees and won! There were a lot of Yankees fans there but the Orioles fans were awesome! Great game, got to see a home run and some great plays. After the game we walked back to the hotel and went to bed!
Here is a link to some more pictures:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10102262261711359.1073741853.16807661&type=1&l=9f6ac94e97
Part 2 of the vacation will be in another blog post!
