Annapolis, MD - Week in Review

Kept forgetting to take time out to write a post all week while my parents were visiting. So I'll sum up the week:
July 4 - We all went ashore together and had a nice lunch at Middleton Tavern and then showed my parents around town and the Naval Academy. At 3:30, about an hour before the parade was going to get started, the skies started to darken and big thunderheads rolled in. We had just enough time to pick up a frozen pizza and some beer and head back to the boat to get the hatches closed just in time before it started pouring. The rain only lasted an hour and we were actually grateful since it cooled things off a lot. We later found out that Main Street was so flooded they had to reroute the parade. We decided to just hang out on the boat and we had a great view of the fireworks from the bow.

July 5 - We headed into Washington DC to do a little sightseeing. We hit the Museum of American History first, which was almost information overload. There's just so much in there - they had exhibits on the American Presidency, the History of American Wars, History of Transportation...by the time we were done our brains were swimming. Of course just as we were ready to move on to the next museum it started raining, but we figured what the heck and walked down to the Air and Space museum anyway even though we all got soaked. We did check out the Wright Brothers plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, and Chuck Yeager's plane (first plane to break the sound barrier). By this time the rain let up a bit and we hailed a taxi to take us down the mall to the Lincoln Memorial and Vietnam Memorial. Itwas the first time my dad, a Vietnam veteran, had seen the wall and unfortunately because of the rain the names didn't stand out like they would if it were dry so it was a little hard to read, but even still it makes an impact to see the more than 58,000 names. Afterwards we walked down to take a peek at the White House from the south lawn side and then headed back to Annapolis and had a fantastic dinner at Buddy's seafood buffet. When we got back to the boat we played a round of Scrabble which my dad won (only because on the first turn he used all his letters to spell "LOITERS". It was a lucky break.)

July 6 - My parents decided that they'd seen the main things they wanted to see in DC, so instead of going back we went to the movie theater to see Superman Returns, which ended up being very good. My parents did a little souvenir shopping in downtown Annapolis after the movie. Then since it was Donna's birthday we went out to a nice dinner at Mangia's which is a great little Italian restaurant.

July 7 - Turned out to be a perfect day for sailing, so we headed out of Annapolis and south to Galesville which is a small town with three restaurants and several marinas. An unfortunate mishap occurred as we were pulling into the fuel dock -- I was cleating off a line but the boat was still moving and I got a pretty bad rope burn on both hands -- tore through several layers of skin on some of my fingers. It was our first serious injury in the year we have lived aboard. Luckily our well-stocked first aid kit had everything we needed to bandage me up and we were able to pick up a mooring in the harbor and go check out the town. Dinner was at a seafood place called Thursday's where we had a nice view of the water.

July 8 - We met up with my Aunt Judy (Dad's sister) and her husband Jim who live about an hour away in Frederick, MD. They drove down to Galesville in time to join us for lunch and drinks at one of the other restaurants - Pirates Cove. Arrrgh! Afterwards we all piled into the car and drove into Annapolis so that we could do a little more souvenir shopping and check out the town a bit more. Then it was back to Galesville for a few beers on the boat and then we all had a fantastic meal at Thursday's again. It was nice that Judy and Jim could come out and spend the day with us while my parents were here.

July 9 - After breakfast we headed into town to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It was a fun film and it was cool to watch for some of the actors and stuntmen that we'd met while we were on Grand Bahama where they were filming. Afterward it was back to the boat and by early afternoon it was time to say goodbye to my parents. We had such a nice visit this week and hopefully they had a fun and relaxing vacation. We know we had a great time: we have never eaten so much or so well since we've lived on the boat -- every day they took us to lunch and/or dinner (thanks, guys!) and we just had a wonderful time with them both. So now we have one day to rest and clean up before we get to do it all over again when my sister Jess gets here on Tuesday...