We walked all the way around the harbor to where the Trapeze School New York in Baltimore
We finished off the evening with ice cream and hanging out back at the apartment. Sunday morning we got up early and drove to Washington D.C. [Sidenote: The Boy Scouts were having their national Jamboree this weekend near D.C., which meant that EVERYWHERE WE TURNED we saw hundreds of Boy Scouts. It was a verifiable ocean of brown and khaki...it was a little scary, really. They looked like they had decided to take over the world. SOOOO MANY BOY SCOUTS!!!]
It was a day for museums! Dad and Beth wanted to go to the Holocaust Museum, so we started off there so they could get their tickets. Then we wandered the Air and Space Museum for a while, ate some lunch, and then they took off. Steph, Mom, Matt and I wandered through the Natural History Museum, spending most of our time in the minerals and gems area. We all decided that diamonds are pretty but that there are tons of other shiny and colorful gems that we loved just as much if not better. Though of course, we also took our turn gawking at the Hope Diamond.
We left there and wandered through part of the sculpture garden on our way to the American History Museum. We stumbled across this huge fountain, and joined the masses as we all sat on the edge and dipped our feet in. It might have been the best part of the day...seriously...it was so hot and our feet had already gotten tired...mmmm.....
After some pictures and some drizzle from the spray of the fountain, we continued on to the American History Museum, where we mainly looked at the first ladies' dresses (poor Matt!) before wandering back to the Holocaust Museum to meet up with Dad and Beth. We is set up. It's a strange phenomenon: in the midst of sand volleyball courts and a merry-go-round, there exists a huge trapeze net where anyone who wants to can pay to learn some basic trapeze skills. They always have a nice crowd of people watching them, which we did (Matt and I have watched before), so it was sort of like being at a free and wildly entertaining circus. You sit there totally rooting for each student as they try to catch onto the teacher's wrists as they fly through the air. It's sweet. If I weren't so scared of heights I might try it...did go back to the National History Museum, then, and looked at less-girly things, such as the restoration and preservation efforts being made on the original flag from Fort McHenry, looking at Julia Child's kitchen (Dad was in heaven), and seeing pop culture artifacts like the Kermit the Frog puppet, the ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz, and Fonzie's jacket from Happy Days.
By this point, though, I was so tired that I thought I was literally going to fall over. I think we all were. We grabbed some water, took the Metro out of the city, and drove back to Baltimore for some pizza and then Trivial Pursuit (which, it turns out, I suck at worse than I had originally thought!)
Monday morning we relaxed a bit and then, for fun, headed over to the Maryland Science Center in Inner Harbor. Science museums are so much fun...we spent a few hours being total kids at heart: coloring dinosaurs and emailing them to our friends, getting measured by laser, playing with heat and density and gravity, taking stress level tests (Matt's shot through the roof the second I sat down next to him! Eeks!), playing with an interactive weather globe, and learning about Maryland crabs. And more stuff too. It was incredibly fun and I can't wait to go back!
(my dinosaur.)
After some cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory and a very hot walk back to the car, I had to get ready for work and bid farewell to my family. We had an amazing weekend; I miss them terribly out here in the east. Matt and I are trying to plan a trip to Chicago before the summer is over...and who knows? Maybe we'll end up in the Midwest someday. But for now, I can be blessed by family visits like these. :)
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