7/12/2013
Bye-bye, Baltimore. We
defeated you! About 45 minutes south is Annapolis, Maryland’s capital, most
famous for the US Naval Academy.
We got to the Academy at
about 20 ‘til 6. You can’t actually park at the Academy (since it’s an active
military instillation, I presume) but you can park on the street and enter
through politely guarded gates. By the time we got there the gates were about
to close. The guard definitely thought it was weird that we just wanted to see
the campus for a few minutes, but he let us in.
We made good use of the
time. We saw the crypt of John Paul Jones (father of the US Navy), accidentally
got lost behind the Navy chapel, Laura got to see some poor Navy dudes
exercising in the rain, and we made it back to the van moments before the gate
was shut. [Well, I wouldn’t say it was a great use
of the time. We had no idea where we were going, and we ended up wandering
around in no particular direction for 10 minutes. I think we ran into a wall
behind the chapel at one point? Apparently
we looked lost enough for a guy in a car on the campus stopping to ask us
politely if we were lost. I wanted to say, “Do you have trains here?” And due to time crunch, I really didn’t get
my “uniformed eye candy” experience.
That was a real disappointment.]
We were staying in town
that night, so we went to check-in at the Village Inn. I was greeted by
Gandhi’s more excitable younger brother. [That’s so
mean.]He was extremely enthusiastic about being the proprietor of the
Village Inn. I asked him for a good place to eat in town, and he nearly jumped
out of his skin with joy at sharing his local wisdom. He started leaping around
the room, gesticulating wildly at roads out the window as he spewed directions.
“Do you understand? Do I need to tell you again? You must eat there! Nowhere
else! Believe me! That that road, over there! Here! Here! Take these maps! You
can keep them! Please! Keep them!”
“Always trust the locals
for food,” Laura told me all the celebrity chefs say on those food shows. [It’s true!!!!] So, we followed his advice and
headed to Cantler’s. The meal was great. I had rockfish – which next to crab is
Maryland’s most famous seafood. [It was great
because it was so family oriented, and I felt comfortable bringing four small
children there. They could make noise and no one would care.] On the way
we got to see some of the rest of Annapolis, which for a seat of government is
still very small town and pretty.
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