Chris & Bryan's Visit

My cousin Bryan & our friend came to stay for a few days for the weekend of Josh's birthday. They got here late Tuesday night. Wednesday night I made the extra lasagna I made & put in the freezer a few weeks ago. It turned out just like the first one. From now on when I make lasagna I think I'll go ahead & make 2. It doesn't take that much longer to put an extra one together & it saves a ton of time when you're ready for the second one. I just put it in the fridge the day before to let it thaw.

Josh took Thursday off. Bryan & Chris both wanted to try a MD crab cake so we took them to a place my friend recommended. I'm SO glad we did. G&M has some AMAZING crab cakes. They're about softball size, other places we've been serve baseball size (if that) crab cakes. These are definitely my favorite so far. The lighting was crappy in the restaurant but here's a picture.

We didn't plan this trip very well & we ended up leaving G&M right as rush hour started. We were on our way to the inner harbor & it took us about 2 hours to get there. This would normally be about a 20 minute trip...maybe 30. That is definitely the worse thing about living up here...the awesome drivers & the traffic. This was by far the worse traffic we've been stuck in while in Baltimore. Once we finally made it to the inner harbor we showed Bryan & Chris around a bit. We went to the HUGE Barnes & Noble, Best Buy & just walked around the harbor a bit. Josh loves looking for crabs in the harbor so we did that for a while. We saw a lot, here are a few...they swim so funny.

We found an awesome piano bar that we will probably go to again at some point. We couldn't stay inside because Bryan left his ID in NC. Luckily we could take our drinks outside. It was still really cool. They had corn hole which was nice. There are several bars & restaurants in the area but we only went to Howl at the Moon that night. It's kind of ironic, it's right next door to another bar called Rams Head.

Friday we went to DC. We went to the National Aquarium, some of the Smithsonians & some of the monuments. I forgot to charge my camera so it died just before I got to take a picture of the Hope Diamond in the Natural History Smithsonian (this was only the 3rd place we went) so I don't have many pictures from DC. Here are a few I got in the aquarium.

I am fascinated with seahorses.

This was a really cool fresh water stingray.

I took a ton of other pictures but I won't bore you with them. We got season passes so we'll be making several other trips to the National Aquarium in DC & Baltimore.

Saturday was Josh's 24th Birthday! We celebrated by going to the Ravens v. Giants pre-season game. We grilled out at our friend's house with his girlfriend. They made burgers & we brought some yummy NC BBQ we made earlier in the day. I'll post more about that later. He had a rooftop area where we ate & it was an amazing view. I left my camera down 3 flights of stairs while we were eating so I didn't get a chance to take pictures. We could see the stadium from there. We walked to the stadium from his house so it was nice to not have to worry about parking or anything. We saw some interesting characters on the way. One guy near the entrance was yelling, "You got a beer? Can't take it in so you might as well give it to me!" haha. It was hilarious. Our seats were WAY up but they were still great. Here are a few pictures.