Today was our day to take the railroad up to Baltimore. We took a short bus ride to the train station, then caught our train. I obviously misread the bus schedule (in my favor!). I was worried we were going to miss the bus, as I thought it got to the train station at 8:45am (which is when the train leaves). Since we had to walk a couple blocks, there's no way we would have made it. In reality, it reached the train station around 8:25am, so we had enough time to get a bite to eat, buy a couple of books for on the train, then rush onto the train. It took us three minutes to buy books- a new record for Tamara (since she has a hard time making decisions).

We took the MARC train to Baltimore's Penn Station. The rail journey was fast- there were only one or two stops, it reached 96mph (96mph! In the United States! On rail!), and the overall average (including stops) was still above 40mph. That means we got from downtown DC to downtown Baltimore in less than an hour. To put that in perspective, the same journey by car (according to Garmin) should take about 45 minutes given zero traffic and no time waiting at stoplights.

After getting to Penn, we took a quick jaunt on the light rail to get to the Inner Harbor. We got off in front of the Camden Yard ballfield and wandered around a little. It's somewhat too bad they don't have the gates open to the public during non-ballgame hours. Still, it is neat to see the field that ushered in the end of the cookie-cutter/multi-purpose stadiums, such as the Q, the Kingdome, and (of course) the Astrodome. While these stadiums seemed to be efficient, they were usually concrete doughnuts built in suburbia. They were ugly and not very well suited to any one sport.

The "retro ballpark" design that was built for Camden Yards has transformed quite a few different cities- especially two of our favorites, San Diego and Seattle. Having true ballfields in the urban center has really defined these cities. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the designers of Camden Yards also designed San Diego's ballfield, as well as dozens of other arenas. Anyhow, that's how a geek who doesn't care for baseball can actually care about it- I love architecture.

After Camden Yards, we walked across the Inner Harbor to the National Aquarium. I've been there before, but it was 10 years ago. They still had some of the things I remembered- the 5-story "spiral aquarium" and the 260k gallon stingray pool. However, they added on in 2005, so there were some new exhibits.

I'd also already been to the "dolphin show", which is much more educational and "pro-dolphin" than somewhere like Sea World. The highlight of the show this time was that they had a one-month-old dolphin that was born in the facility- the first birth they've ever had. There was another youngster in the pool that was trying to jump with the older dolphins- it was really cute, because he'd be in sync but would be more awkward, and wouldn't land very gracefully.

The baby dolphin was so young and important to the facility that they told everyone in the audience to stay quiet during the show- no clapping, no screaming or cheering. It was a little odd, and I really didn't think a thousand people with children could refrain, but they did.

As we were looking out across the Inner Harbor from the aquarium, Tamara saw that the science center was presenting Body Worlds 2. I had wanted to go when a similar exhibit was in Seattle at the end of November 2006, but I came down with a rare throat infection. So it was nice to see it.

Tamara's a huge fan of these types of exhibits- not surprising- she's looking forward to dissecting (human) cadavers in her pre-med/pre-nursing program. I thought it was interesting- none of it grossed me out- but I wasn't terribly into it either. Some of the muscle structures were fascinating, but I was a little underwhelmed by the whole event. I can't watch surgery shows on TV, but this was easy to see; it just didn't have a lot of impact on me.

After Body Worlds, we were pretty exhausted from walking around Baltimore. We'd walked at least 7 miles around Baltimore, and that didn't even include the time we spent standing and walking inside the aquarium and Body Worlds exhibit. (the 7 mile number comes from my GPS- so it really only includes time spent outside of buildings)

We then wandered east to Camden Yards and saw a MARC train was close to leaving for DC. Since it saved us a light-rail trip back to Penn Station, we boarded. That turned out to be a real bonus! We left on the 3:30 train, so we were back in DC early (about 4:30). I love cities with trains and underground/subway systems.