Day Six: Mid Atlantic Trip 2005

Baltimore, Maryland: We left early in the morning on the trip to Baltimore-Washington International Airport. When we arrived at the airport, we learned that our flight was overbooked and we were moved to a later flight, resulting in a 3 hour stay in Baltimore. This was not too bad since we had yet to eat breakfast.

My parents had not left the airport property, so I called them and they came back to the terminal to pick us up and we headed to breakfast. We had breakfast at the Bob Evans by the airport then decided to do a driving tour of Baltimore since we still had some time left before the flight.

Our brief driving tour took us pass the ballparks at Camden Yards, Baltimore Inner Harbor and downtown Baltimore. After the hour long tour, we headed back to the airport, said our good-byes and boarded our flight.

The second leg of our flight from Atlanta to Sarasota was an adventure. The fun began while we were sitting in the plane at the terminal, awaiting to push away from the gate. Upon transfer of power, the onboard power supply went down. After a few minutes of no power or air-conditioning, they hooked us back up to the terminal. A little while later, they tried again and same thing. Meanwhile a flurry of Delta employees scurried around the outside of the plane. Finally on the third attempt, they got the transfer to complete successfully but now we were delayed by a computer failure. An hour and a half later, we were finally in the sky and heading home.

The pilot must have had some good tail winds, because it felt like we were moving a lot faster then usual. As we got into Florida, we started to encounter the afternoon thunderstorms that are prevalent in Florida in the summer. The constant altitude changes and turbulence made it feel like we were back on the rollercoasters from Hersheypark. Because of the weather, there was no slow decent into the airport, we made a last minute drop and landing at SRQ, ending a rather exciting ride. Once we were on the ground, we came to find out that the plane was still having problems with the computer system and electrical system stemming from the Atlanta issue and resulting in the wild ride back.

Although we ended the trip early, it was still a great vacation. There is so much to see and do in NYC, I can’t wait to go back again. Maybe next time we will spend a few days in just the city and not try to piggyback multiple cities into the same trip.

For photos of the city, visit my Baltimore photo gallery.