Peter's Weekend aka when NY meets Baltimore
Gosh I am so on and off about my blogging. School has kept me busy busy busy! This last week has been one of the most non-stop hectic weeks all semester. It's the home stretch and I can feel it. Last weekend I met up with my best friends since high school in Baltimore (more of that to come) so I didn't get to do any homework all weekend. I normally like to get a headstart on my assignments by spending a dedicated 24 hrs throughout the weekend towards assignments that are due the next week. I don't like waiting for the last minute to do everything. Well this weekend was too important to me and I made the choice that I was just going to be stressed out the rest of the following week. Regardless I got back on Monday evening and went right back into my regular life routine. So my apologizes for those dedicated readers who were looking for a new post. Hoping that the break in school will allow me more time for content.
So onto my trip! I haven't seen my best friends all together since my bff Katherine and I road tripped it to NYC like 3 years ago or so. It's been too long. It was my bff Peter's birthday and his amazing fiance planned out this whole Baltimore vacation and was gracious enough to include us! Katherine drove in from North Carolina and I flew in from Kansas. It was amazing from the get go. It was as if we had never left each other's sides. That to me is true friendship. We are all over the country and don't get to talk and hang out all the time like regular besties but when we do get together it's like old times. So many FRIENDS references and nerdy talk about anime, cartoons and videogames. It was great! Here in Kansas I actually don't have any friends of my own. I really don't go anywhere but school and live quite a boring life. For awhile I thought that I missed having friends in my life, but I realized after this weekend that I just miss MY friends in my life.
The first day we hit the ground running, having cocktails at the hotel restaurant, then off to Baltimore's Inner Harbour where we caught the last day of "The Light's Fest." It was so amazing. I am a sucker for anything that lights up, changes color, glitters, or shines and this place had it all. As we meandered around the glowing displays and interactive chromatic experiences we had a blast. We drank and shoved our faces with bratwurst (I wanted funnel cake but the line was wayyyyy to long). We found our way into an event at the Maryland Science Center where they had opened up the museum at night with drinks, two different rooms with DJ's, giant Jenga and cornhole. It was seriously one of the best nights I have had in awhile. I mean it was a combination of two of my favorite worlds, music and dancing with science! After partying and grinding our soles away from all the walking we finally decided to head home and caught the fireworks show outside... what a great way to end the night, I couldn't have imagined a better day.
Day two consisted of us getting our lives together from having little sleep. We got dressed in our Sunday best and headed to the free, made-to-order breakfast, again in the hotel restaurant. After a quick bite we hoped into our uber and headed to this diamond in the rough called Graffiti Alley. I have no clue how Peter's fiance Ray even found this thing and set it all up. We got free reign of this amazing art installation warehouse of graffiti art and random loved junk. We had 60 minutes to take pictures and explore. I had so much fun pretending we knew how to pose and just being creative and having fun taking pictures wondering how awesome they were going to look on instagram later (for me a week later...oops). After the photoshoot session we headed to brunch. We landed at Miss Shirley's and when I tell you that it was some of the most amazing food you would have to just trust me. I wasn't even super hungry so I know that the food was just that good. I think we all got a little bit of everything. The place also has this conference room they use as a waiting area. Of course because we are all just big ass kids we colored pictures with the white scratch paper and jumbo crayons they had laid out for children. After engorging ourselves with some of the most amazing food Baltimore has to offer, we trekked it around Baltimore to see what more the city had to offer us. We walked around being the tourists we are and just took in the beautiful scenery. The weather was the perfect backdrop for such an alluring place, I can see why it's called the "Charm City" now. We headed to the "National Aquarium" to take in some picturesque installments of tropical fish, stingrays, sharks and my favorite... Jellyfish!! We spent over 2 hours there! By then it was late afternoon and we were dog tired (we are getting old people... cut us some slack.) We headed back to the hotel to rest our hoofs. At that point we decided that we were all ready to just get drunk, order room service and play videogames. After a few rounds of "Bomberman", Katherine who is notoriously narcoleptic was falling asleep while eating her dinner so we called it a night and watched the new "Jersey Shore" till we fell asleep. Another perfect day.
Sadly the following morning I had to wake up at the buttcrack of dawn and head back to my life in Kansas. I am just glad that I got the chance to be surrounded by the people I love and enjoy spending company with. I would call this little vacay a success no matter how stressed the following week ended up being.
Shantece G.