Fort McHenry

It’s been a while since we’ve had a post here on DrStroz.com.  Chalk that up to having to switch hosts, and just not having much time and money to spend on travel.

Today, Papa, Kathy, Ashley, Ben, Myriah and Benjamin will be going to Baltimore to visit Fort McHenry and The National Aquarium in Baltimore.  We’re all very excited, and I hope to have plenty of photos to share with everyone.

So, wish us good luck with the weather, and look forward to a report on our travels!

As is customary with many people, my father and Kathy tend not to travel 24/7.  As such, there tend to be large spans of time where they have nothing to report, as their journeys in their day jobs don’t necessarily take them very far.

This leaves a great absence of material for this blog during the downtime.  What should you do with your time?  Well, go out there and make some news!  If you are bored to tears, you can email me and I can set you up with your own blog for a very reasonable price.

Otherwise, you can hear my goings on at my blog, Stroz.net.  Until my family has more fun stuff to report, I’ll see you later!

This is a guest post by Benjamin M. Strozykowski from the Stroz.net blog.

Well, Thursday was a bit of a disappointment for us both.

We started driving at around 10:15pm on Wednesday night and, other than stopping for gas, drove through until we arrived at our hotel around 10:30am. They let us check in early, so we hauled all of our stuff up here and I basically just passed out, after not having slept for 27 hours.

I woke up around 3:30pm, and it was raining. What a bummer, we were planning on going out to the beach on our first day, but it’s thundering pretty bad. So, we decided to shower and get ready, and we headed over to our favorite restaurant of the area, The Crab Shack.

I got the BBQ Ribs, and Myriah got the Half-and-Half with shrimp and crab legs. We shared each of our dishes, as they are always monstrous. After dinner, we walked around a bit, looked at the alligator pond, saw a few cats, and went into the bird house to see the Macaw’s and other Parrots.

We got in the car, and headed back to the hotel, and I decided I wanted ice cream, so we stopped at the ATM, then headed over to the “Sugar Shack” for some hand-dipped icecream. Myriah got a chocolate malt, and I got a cookie dough scoop on a waffle cone.

We drove back to the hotel, and decided that since it wasn’t raining, and it was warm enough, maybe we should at least go walk on the beach, so we headed over (Myriah had finished her malt, I was still carrying my ice cream). When we got there, we could see a visible divide in the sky where the thunderheads were moving in over the ocean. It was really neat, one side a light grey, the other almost black.

Myriah saw one lone seagull, so she asked for a bit of my cone, and threw it to him. As the cone chunk left her hand, 50 more seagulls showed up, staring at Myriah. So, we fed them a few more chunks, and it started to rain really hard.

We made it back to the hotel and into the freezing air conditioning.

If only today would be any different, but it looks like the Weather Channel has other ideas for us:

Last night Joe and I went out and walked along the Seine. We saw the Place de la Concord, Jardins de Tuileries and the Eiffel Tower lit up with bright lights. Eiffel Tower was covered with huge strobe lights and 2 spinning spotlights off the top. This morning we rode the Metropolitan (subway) to the Arc de Triomphe. We did not go up to the top because the line was incredibly long. Walked back to the hotel along the Champs Elysees. Stopped for lunch at the Grande Hotel across from the Opera Garnier. Joe said it was a wallet busting lunch. Went into the Opera house. Saw the grand staircase and even got to go into an opera box. The place is very beautiful. Extremely ornate with a lot of wasted space. This evening we’ll be packing and preparing for our trip home tomorrow. We are taking a shuttle bus to the airport around 9:30 a.m. Our flight takes off around 12:25 p.m. We should arrive at Dulles around 2:50 p.m (local time). Then of course our 3 hour drive home in the limo. See everyone when we arrive.

We were awoken in the middle of the night by a horrific thunder and lightening storm. There was torrential rain but fortunately non of it got in our open window. By the time we left for our 1/2 day tour of Historic Paris and Notre Dame, the rain had pretty much subsided. We drove around the city and saw the Sorbonne, Latin Quarter, Bastille Square, and the Opera Garnier. Then, we took a short boat ride to Notre Dame (buses are not allowed on it’s island). By the time our guide got us in we only had 15 minutes to look around. We decided to break away from the group and walk back (it wasn’t that far). This way we got to look around Notre Dame for an hour and then we walked down the street to St. Chapelle. There are incredible stained glass windows there. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a little bistro for a late lunch. We got club sandwiches and for dessert we split creme brulee, tiramisu, and a strawberry tart. Excellent! Joe had my dad go to use the toilets because they had pissoirs. Came back to the hotel and relaxed for a little while. Dinner tonight will be finishing up some of the snacks that we brought with us so that we don’t have to pack them for the ride home. Tomorrow, we’re going to the Arc de Triomphe and Opera Garnier.