The Weekend Before Crhistmas in Baltimore

OK, a few mundane weekend things . . . .

I hung out in Baltimore this past weekend, pretty nice weekend with TONS OF SNOW. 20 inches or so.

Friday night we went down to Fells Point and had supper at Brick Oven Pizza (BOP), good pizza, best pizza I have had in Baltimore to date. I think that of the three big named places for pizza in Baltimore I would have to rank them Brick Oven Pizza, Iggies and Matthews. Matthews is the crowd favorite, but I don't know why. BOP had a great crust and a good selection of toppings. Iggies had good toppings, but I was not a fan of their crust - - it was very thin. Matthews, the one that has the most press, was kind of disappointing, weird crust, plain toppings, just not that spectacular. None of them could beat the original Valentinoes, though.

After pizza, we went to a local Christmas attraction: 34th Street. Folks on the block went close to the Griswold level to decorate their houses. There were some pretty standard decorations (Pictures in the normal picture place) to some very Baltimore-unique stuff. Old Bay seasoning, crabs, National Bohemian beer cans (Natty Bo?) and some other kitschy stuff were predominant throughout the street. The highlight was an open house where a guy had some of his metal art work out. I am not a fan of eclectic art, so I was mostly in the "Hmmmm, Nice?" mode. You be the judge, and let me know what you think. Sparkplugs, really? Um, ok, if you say it is art, it is art.

I probably should have left that night, everyone was talking about how much snow was going to fall in B'more that night, I didn't believe it. Of course, we got about a foot of snow that night, and another 8 inches that day. Way too much for this Carolina loving man. I took a couple of pictures of my car under the snow, very tragic. We did some driving around on Saturday (had to find coffee, no electricity in the house or in the local 7-11, tragedy), but, quit after we realized that there were way too many crazy folks, and way too much snow. Luckily, the power went out too, so it was just a great weekend. We played a little bit of Scrabble and just hung out, basically, not that much else we could do. The power came back on about 6 pm. We ended up the night by watching the latest Harry Potter movie. Not sure what the folks were thinking when they made that movie, but it was very confusing to me. I had even read the book, and had problems following the movie, and I thought some of the actors were just going through the motions.

I came back Sunday morning, and hung out on the bay, so, good weekend.