Baltimore ROCKS!

I am a week behind on my blogs, apologies dear reader.

However, straight to business and the hot, smokin’ city that is Baltimore. This is my kind of place. Bars, people with Stetsons hanging around outside bars, music blaring out of bars, little restaurants that have bars in them…..it was pretty damn cool.

A pizza restaurant that looked like it could give you first class food poisoning, frequented by all sorts of people and races, it was made of ace because they let me put shrimp and clams and spinach on one pizza – bliss! A juke box that stuttered out a mix of Dolly Parton and Bob Marley and JayZ (I think). It was an eclectic sight to behold, smell and taste.

It was at this restaurant that I noted Snickerdoodle cookies and first got into conversation about high fructose corn syrup, which they put in most everything. It is the lethal drug that makes people very, very fat. I have become a little obsessed with sourcing this out in every item I buy. You will not take hold of me, high fructose corn syrup…..

On to a Moroccan bar with cocktails at FIVE DOLLARS each – oh yes. Oh dear. The thing that captivated me most about this bar was the older gentleman, who looked not inconsiderably dissimilar to my father in law, who was gyrating against a s/he with eyelashes larger than my hand and fake breasts bigger than the watermelon I had purchased at Wegmans that very morning. Her skirt was shorter than mine have ever been, and that’s saying something. I wish I had gone up and asked who they were and what their story was and how much he had paid for him/her, but it would probably have been inapporpriate.

There were some beautiful and interesting people in that bar. Black girls done up to the nines with massive earrings and fabulous laughs. Sparky Latinos with bootys that really shook and some hard-core lycra. Frat pack sophomores who couldn’t handle their drink…..

This was day 3 in America for me and therefore, jet lag got the better of me at 2.30am. Zzzzzzzzz.

Nudity

Let’s talk nudity and America. For those of you who know me, I have no issue whatsoever with nudity. I think it must be the Danish in me. It’s fine, let it all hang out.

However…..the Americans think very, very differently about this. For example, the mother of a four year old boy changing at the poolside under a towel will be asked to protect his nudity “in the interests of modesty”. You what?

Restrooms (note) have male, female and family. Children of the opposite sex to the parents are not allowed in changing rooms or restrooms of that parent. “Please use the family room, ma’am.” Again, you what?

Get over yourselves! Prudish to the hilt! And don’t get me started on their attitude to breastfeeding in public…..

Bare all, one and all!

The car jacking

Don’t get too excited, not all is as it seems.

So, we’re at a store, we have stuff and a child, and it’s all a bit of a palava getting in the car. My husband does one side putting Harry in, I sort the other. We drive off out of the store car park and on to the slip road where I stop at the lights……

….lady runs up to my window and bangs on my window…..

Ma’am, there is a pair of glasses on your roof!

Me to hubby – crap, your glasses are on the roof!

Hubby – my glasses are on the roof!

He jumps out, grabs them as the light turns green. All is well again and how we laughed at what a complete and utter sillybilly nincompoop he is, especially given his chosen career path.

So, not a car jacking defined by the Urban Dictionary, but for one split second I thought it might have been….

Maggie Moo’s icecream

Couple of words about this…

…..sickly, colouring that stains, massive portions, high fructose corn syrup.

Vile.

Finally

Let me tell you Harry’s wish into the wishing well in the Mall….it will melt your hearts.

“I wish I could go to go to school.”

Bless him. And after a week, so do I. 😉