DC Wins Over Maui Part VI

The hotel bill waiting for Eddie and me in the door reflected a penny charged and a penny returned to my credit card for parking.  Hooray!  We'd be able to leave the hotel without any parking problems.  Unless they deactivated the cards before we left.  Unless the yellow caution tape ensnared our car.  Neither of those things happened.  We took one last glance at the Pentagon as we headed out of DC.

Worst photo of the Pentagon ever. Thanks, Obama.

Instead of heading straight home, we planned to stop off in Baltimore to see the Inner Harbor and pass by the sports stadiums.  In doing so, we somehow added hours onto our trip home according to the GPS, which I simply could not comprehend.  But we were en route already, so we dealt with it.

We passed by Camden Yards and where the Ravens play.  It was still really early, so the harbor was not crowded at all.  We found parking and walked to the water to see the boats because that's what you do when you're at a harbor.  Some sort of convention had to be going on, because we also saw a lot of people dressed rather interestingly.

Eddie's obsession with ducks -- "look at their feet!"

Sports happen here

See? Interesting

Also, there was a trolley.  We did not take the trolley.  Eddie, however, got a kick out of this:

"What if you're 101?" Good question, love.

 Right in the middle of the plaza was a huge granite block with twisted iron on top.  I immediately told Eddie that it had to be something about September 11.  I didn't know this was here.  We walked over and one of the Harbor Guides explained to me that the hash-marks line up with the shadow of the building behind us.  It was the Trade Center in the harbor.  Well, that did it.  I thanked her and quickly walked away because I was already in tears, and Eddie, having no idea what was going on because of course he wasn't paying attention to what the woman was explaining to me, was chasing after me and asking me what happened.  I sat on a bench and finally explained to him what it was and he was like, Ohh, yeah, I didn't hear her say that.  You think? I usually do not cry in public, but this was unexpected.  I was wearing sunglasses, so no one could really see I was crying, and I wasn't sobbing like a lunatic, so it all worked out okay.  I returned to the plaza and read the explanation of what was there.  It was a really nice tribute.  And a great way to start the morning with all the crying and people with computers on their heads.

We stopped for breakfast at the Corner Bakery Cafe. I found my new favorite breakfast item, and I want to learn how to make it at home: Chilled Swiss Oatmeal.  I scarfed down the entire bowl at an embarrassing rate. And then we headed out to go home.
We stopped at the same rest stop as we did on the way down.  There we found the world's most popular Wendy's.  The line was 40 people deep and not budging.

I snacked on whatever we had left in snacks as Eddie waited and eventually got food.  It was nice to take a break there because the rest of the way home was a long drive complete with hours of traffic.  I drove quite a bit, though, according to my husband aka A Beautiful Mind, I drove an hour and 26 minutes.  How did he figure that out?  Something about when the GPS said we'd arrive home when I started and when I said I wanted to pull over.  I pointed out that the ETA on the GPS doesn't change when we sit in traffic or when we stop.  Math skillz.

Apparently 3 minutes

 We switched driving in Jersey for the ride home through Staten Island because that's where all the scary crazy traffic is, and since Speedy Baddriverson rear-ended me, I'm not too keen on driving in mayhem.  As Eddie took the wheel, I was able to do this:

And that was the line of relief.  Though it took about another hour and a half to get home, we were in New York and being in New York always feels so very good no matter how great it was to be away.