Baltimore, Briefly

May 1-4, 2009
I was in Baltimore for the annual Pediatric Academic Societies meeting. As you can see from the photos, it rained the entire time! Readers of this blog with good memories will remember that last year this meeting was held in Honolulu, and it never rained. Again I stayed at a Hilton hotel, but instead of the view of Diamond Head, I had the view in the lowest photo of the infield of Camden Yards. Cool, but in a different way. Unfortunately, the Orioles were out of town. Otherwise it would have been fun to watch a baseball game from my hotel window! The view was even better from the fitness center, where the treadmills lined up directly with home plate and second base. The middle photo shows the USS Constellation, a ship with a similar history to the USS Constitution in my hometown of Charlestown, MA. We live on Constellation Wharf, and although it has never been officially confirmed, I've always assumed that our pier was named for this ship. The top photo is of my dear friend Jan, inspecting the fresh fish at a wonderful restaurant called the Black Olive where we ate dinner. We had delicious grilled seafood with a Greek flair. The highlight, however, was the baklava ice cream. The menu states that the recipe has been patented (!) I can understand why. It was delicious and very unique, like pureed essence of baklava with a vanilla ice cream base. By the way, i took these photos with my blackberry. I didn't take my camera to Baltimore, because I didn't think it was "blog-worthy," but I changed my mind!