Baltimore Street Art

A sampling of some random street art from down in Baltimore.

JL Invasion 2012 - Cherry Blossums

We trekked out to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens to check out the famous Cherry Blossoms. As with most things of late, the weather had screwed up their schedule so some trees had already blossomed whereas others were still pre blossom. In a 'normal' year they all pretty much come out at the same time. Never-the-less it was still an impressive sight and outside of the planes flying overhead from JFK, the place was very chilled out.


After the gardens we headed back to the city but stopped at the Dekalb Market in Brooklyn. This market is made up of all these converted shipping containers and was very cool. It was interesting being at a market on a weekday without the usual weekend crowds. Very cool

If you look in the top left you can just make out one of the planes which flew over the serene gardens every 30 seconds.

The gardens had a pretty cool bonsai display

Dekalb Market

JL Invasion 2012 - Baltimore

We recently had an invasion from the southside for the third time for some and the second for others. The following 26 blogs will cover off all the stuff we did over the the two and a half weeks the G-Crew were here. Episode one was a trip to the exotic Baltimore. We'd been meaning to get down there for a bit of a look and with the baseball opening game on at Camden Park, we thought it would be the perfect place to head down for the weekend.

Baltimore is a 2.5 hour train from Manhattan. We were staying in a hotel fairly close to the inner harbor so it was a quick trip to dump our bags and then we headed to the Baseball. Baltimore was playing Minnesota for the first game of the season. It was a beautiful day and the place was pumping. It was a bit of a change for us as we normally sit in the Bleachers at Yankee Stadium but this time we were up in the grand stand. I'm not sure if it was the atmosphere but we all felt it was probably the best game we had been to yet. Without a doubt the highlight was the streaker who came out about mid way through the 5th.

After the baseball we went for a wander around the inner harbor. We took a slight detour through the 'entertainment' strip of Baltimore which was a little scary. The interesting thing about this place is you could be on one side of the street and it's fine then cross the road and walk a block and you're in what feels like a not so savory area. 

That night we travelled out of town a little to a restaurant called Market Table. This is another one of those farm to table setups and they had their own gluten free menu. The building was an old barn which had undergone an awesome renovation. It was one of the more enjoyable meals that we had.

Saturday some slept in, others went and got on colored buses and saw statues. You know who you are. We then headed out to the B&O train museum. It was a train geeks paradise but I really enjoyed it. The place is set in a former working rail yard and they had a really diverse collection of locos.

From here we headed over to Fells Point. This is one of the trendy parts of Baltimore and is one of those places which is slowly being gentrified. We had a sensational lunch at a tapas place, did a bit of shopping then headed back to the hotel.

Cuz Shedo then came and picked us up and we went back to her place in Columbia for a BBQ. It was a great evening had by all.

Sunday was another sleep in for some and more random statues for others. We then beelined up north to a gluten free bakery for brunch. This was also pretty nice. After this it was back on the train and chow chow to Baltimore.

Baseball opening game

The crowd across the road from the baseball

The streaker in the bottom left being chased by the police

A Hard Rock T did not have a badge for

The inner harbor

The inner harbor

The inner harbor

Market Table

Gluten free burger

Market Table

B&O Train museum

A random statue

The lake by Shedo's palce

The most delicious crab sanga

Tapas in Fells Point

Fells Point

Fells Point

The gluten free bakery. I've forgotten its name.

Bahamas

Well my faithful subscriber base. First of all I must apologize for the long time between blogs. The delay was caused by the greater majority of my blog subscriber base being over here and keeping me so damn busy. I'll blog on that soon but I need a little time to go through the 3,768 photos they left on my computer. In the meantime we just got back from a great weekend down in the Bahamas.


A train, plane, very small plane and mini van later and we were on the beach on Cat Island which is an outer island of the Bahamas. It's about a 30 minute flight from Nassau.

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It was one more check on our Kokomo journey of the Caribbean and a truly beautiful part fo the world. When I say there was not a lot there I really mean there was not a lot there. Our hosts at Pigeon Cay were really great and cooked for us twice a day which was nice. The lobster on the first night was sensational.

The first day was really nice but sadly our bad luck with island hopping weather continued and it was got progressively worse on the second day and ended up in near cyclonic conditions on the Sunday. It rained so hard we had a leak in our roof. Very 'rustic'. It was not the end of the world. Our unit was decked out with a really nice couch and we had plenty of books and it gave us a chance to have some true R&R. 


Sadly now it's back to the grind but we've still got Miami and St John to look forward to.

The micro plane we flew over from Nassau on

We survived

There were awesome sunsets on the Thursday and Friday nights

The campfire on the beach at night.

This is why we love coming to the Caribbean so much

The campfire at the place we stayed at

Our front porch!

We found it quite hard to find a secluded spot on the beach

The 'honor' bar