Simply Serendipitous

As you may or may not know, Baltimore is a great central location if you’re ever looking to take weekend excursions.  I’ve taken a few out-of-town trips over the last few years up along the east coast, and now that I have a car up here with me, I’ve been taking trips out to the ‘burbs more often, too.  What can you get to from Baltimore?   Well, it depends on what you’re looking for, but here are a few of my favorite excursions.

Visiting the tree at the Rockefeller Center in New York City

1. A weekend in the City:  For no more than $40 round-trip (and significantly less if you book in advance — $2 round trip, anyone?), and about four hours each way, you can get to New York City.  There are a number of great discount bus lines servicing the east coast these days, though I’m personally a fan of Bolt Bus.  With outlets and wireless, the four hours fly by.   They also have early-morning departures, so you could go up just for the day if you so chose.  Bolt Bus picks up and drops off at Penn Station (both the one in Baltimore and the one in New York), so you don’t have to worry about stepping off the bus into some random/unknown part of either city.

I’ve made the trip up there every few months this school year to visit my med school-bound boyfriend (congrats, Will!) and you could even do work on the bus – back in the fall when I was applying to law school, I wrote three application essays and my reward for the hard work was a weekend in NYC.  Perfect.

2. A day in DC:  For $8-15 each way, you can get to our nation’s capital in about an hour.  The Smithsonian museums are free and the metro makes it very easy to get around.  Wear comfortable walking shoes – trust me.   Washington has a very different feel than other cities and it’s a wonderful place to explore.  With countless great restaurants and lovely shopping options, it’s perfect for a day trip.  Of course, if you’re feeling particularly ambitious, you can get great deals on hotels, too.  A close friend of mine celebrated her 22^nd birthday in DC and got a hotel room to make it easier to go out and enjoy the nightlife without worrying about getting back to Baltimore in the wee hours of the morning.

At the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC

Consider planning a trip out to DC in the spring during the cherry blossom festival – the trees are absolutely gorgeous and the weather (usually) is, too.

3. White Marsh: There will come a point (if not already) when you’ll start to think it’s fun to look at furniture – especially furniture with funny names and cheap prices.  White Marsh, about 30 minutes from campus, has an Ikea.  Aside from great (cheap) furniture, you can stop in for some Swedish meatballs or $1 fat-free frozen yogurt.  When I was getting ready for my 21^st birthday, I bought champagne flutes in a six-pack for $4.50.  I guess admitting to that makes it significantly less fancy, but hey, it’s college.  White Marsh also has a decent-sized mall and a ton of outdoor shops and restaurants.  If you really want to make a day of it, you can stop by the movie theater, which is one of the best places nearby to catch a movie in IMAX.

What can I say – I was raised in suburbs and I just can’t get past their wonderful convenience of having every single store within a small radius.

4. Arundel Mills: Out near the airport is this glorious mall. If you’re a bargain-hunter or just love big, huge, suburban shopping centers, this is the place for you.  If you’re feeling a little kitschy and want to catch the Medieval Times show, you can do that, too.  If you’re missing home and want Chick-fil-a – okay maybe that’s just me – you can find one here.  There’s a Dave & Buster’s, a Lego Land, and countless stores, both standard and factory outlets.

In fact, I’m heading out that way after I finish this blog!

Okay, so I guess my short list is a little heavy on the shopping trips, but there are plenty of other places you can explore as well; Philadelphia, Annapolis, Alexandria (more shopping, admittedly), Southern Maryland (my birthplace and first hometown!), Colonial Williamsburg, Ocean City (either the one in Maryland or the one in New Jersey), the mountains, the bay, the beach – your options for weekend trips are truly great.  If you don’t have a car and want to go somewhere beyond the reach of public transportation, check out Zipcar, an affordable and easy way to rent a car as a student.

So first and foremost, if any of you read my recent entry on the ethics board, I do want to say I’m sorry for the departure from my normal writing style and I can assure you it’s no permanent change.  I just felt like for that topic, it was best to just stick with the relevant information and try to give a good picture of the board without making it too light–it can be in very serious situations and I always try to treat it accordingly.

Anyway, I just got back from NEW YORK CITY last week!  Quite honestly, it’s amazing I even got on the bus back to Baltimore.  It was my first time to the city and I was such a tourist… I was constantly looking up and around at everything, trying to discreetly snap pictures on my phone, and occasionally (when the urge was overwhelming) pulling out my real camera to take a picture as quickly as possible.  But let me backtrack.  This was a three-day, two-nigtht trip as a capstone on my intersession class, International Development and Policy, or, as I like to think of it, Globalization 201.  It was a little bit more advanced than an introduction, but the coolest thing about it was that all of our speakers (and we had at least one every day for two weeks) were Hopkins alumni.

I think one of the most important things I learned (other than subtle reassurance from four lawyers that I will still be able to find a job when I graduate from law school) was that Hopkins alumni can really do amazing things.  We had such a broad range of people who were all doing things they loved and had come from so many different majors (a Biochemistry major–which no longer exists–now working in strategic marketing in finance, a BME working for Blackstone and teaching us about oil and natural resources and banking, etc., etc.).  Pretty mpressive, yes?

So, as I mentioned, we had two weeks of class and then we had our trip to NYC where we had three days packed with site visits, including HSBC, UNCTAD, International Rescue Committee, Council on Foreign Relations, and several others.   We arrived in the city about 30 minutes before our first site visit, at 40th & 5th Avenue and had roughly 20 minutes of free time.  Naturally, on the bus ride up, I had already vetted the area and knew there was an H&M two blocks away, so as soon as we got there, I took off and scurried around the store, buying two dresses, which I then stuffed into my purse, trying to conceal my consumerism from our site visit.  Hey–I needed birthday dresses! I also had time to have lunch with Julia (read her recent alumni blog
and archived blog!) and catch up with an old friend I hadn’t seen from elementary school.  While it was an incredibly busy and tiring schedule, I had just enough time to fit in a couple of wonderful little things that made the trip perfect.

So now, on the eve of my 21st birthday and the start of the spring semester (whoa!), I’m so excited for everything that’s coming these next few months!  This intersession class really sparked my interest in a couple of different groups and really kicked me into gear for applying for more internships, so I’m looking forward to all of that work these next couple of weeks.  I have a surprising class schedule that I’ll tell you all about shortly (preview: an English requirement and an Econ class?!), and it’s about time to start LSAT prep.  With that, I’m off to wonder where in the world the time goes.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

Our 44th President said many important (and beautiful) things, but yesterday, as I stood partially frozen to the ground on our National Mall, this is what struck me.  I hope you all were able to be a part of witnessing history yesterday; just as Admissions Daniel said, I will remember every part of those moments for the rest of my life.

Because I hope that you were all able to hear Obama’s speech, and Admissions Daniel wrote a really wonderful entry on his thoughts/lack of words for right now, I decided my entry will just be about my day in Washington, braving the freeeeezing temperature, and you can read Daniel’s entry as something much more touching.  Enjoy. (I hope).

My boyfriend bought MARC train tickets back in December, so we had a relatively easy and reliable way to get into Washington.  Unfortunately, I’m not a morning person, and I don’t handle large crowds or cold temperatures too well (one would think I’d avoid the inauguration then, right?).  But despite feeling absolutely terrible at 3:45 AM, I dragged myself up and around and made it to DC.  The energy at Baltimore’s Penn Station was incredible, (especially considering it was 4:45ish), and it only got more exciting the closer we got to Washington.  Once we de-trained in DC, (6:00) we received quite the awakening (and introduction to the day’s security) when we saw the security in the train station armed with some kind of automatic rifles.  That was enough to get us out of Union Station quickly and onward to the Mall we went. [picture: see the Capitol building through the arch?  You'd think that would mean it's a quick walk to it.  False.]

The route to get to the National Mall was insane.  It took us about an hour to an hour and a half to walk from Union Station down there.  Still feeling rather ill, I was seriously doubting my decision to come.  But I just kept shuffling along, occasionally whining, until we finally got to the mall where all of the volunteers were greeting people.  They were SO cheerful, I remember asking Mike, “WHY are these people so happy?”  (Oh, maybe it’s because of what today is all about…)  So we found a spot to make camp (sit down) and wait.  By now it was about 7:30, so there was a lot of waiting to be done.  We were in between the Natural History museum and the Smithsonian Castle museum, not sure exactly how far that is from the Capitol building.  It was a pretty nice view though. [picture: our view in the early morning, before it got too crowded].

Mike left to get hot chocolate around 8 and didn’t return until around 10:45.  Long hot chocolate line.
Longest ever, maybe?  I think I spent that time being a curled-up ball, trying to stay warm.  It was SO cold out there!  A little boy next to me was screaming because his hands were cold, and I definitely considered joining him at a few different times.  But finally the screens started showing live footage of people walking out of the building, the crowd was getting really excited, and it was time to stop being a little ball on the dusty ground.  {Did you know the Mall doesn’t really have much of any grass?  Major disappointment, in my opinion.}

I really enjoyed the Invocation, despite the controversy that erupted last month or so when they announced that Rev. Rick Warren would give it.  Aretha Franklin sang next, which was not exactly my taste, to be honest.  Joe Biden took his oath next, and then a piece arranged by John Williams was played.  At 12:02, Obama took his Oath of Office, followed by the address.  Next, an American poet read something (also not really my taste) and Rev. Joseph E. Lowery gave the Benediction.  The Benediction was very strong and the crowd seemed to enjoy it, but it felt a bit racist toward the end.  I may have misheard/misunderstood though.  I did think it was precious, though, when he called the Obama girls “angelics.”  The US Navy band performed the National Anthem, and that was about it for what we could see/hear.

Mike and I headed over to the Museum of Natural History which was perfect–I had been there when I was much younger on a school field trip and I remembered some of the exhibits, which was very fun.  A lot of people were just trying to find sanctuary in the building, so we had to step over a lot of sitting/sleeping people pretty much everywhere.  I could certainly relate to how they felt, but it didn’t feel right to go into a Smithsonian and just sit on the floor or sleep.  We wandered around for awhile and eventually had lunch, before deciding to make our way back to Union Station.  We had managed to spend enough time in the museum that many of the blockades had been taken down and we were able to get all the way down to the end of the mall,
before realizing the parade was still going on and that the street was still being used for people waiting to go into the parade.  We had to go through to the other side of the street, and cut through the Air and Space Museum, another old friend of mine.  Mike hadn’t ever been so we walked around a little bit before we were all kicked out so they could set up for later events. [picture: the Mall, post-inauguration.  It's hard to tell, but the entire place was covered in trash, sadly.]
We were able to walk really close to the Capitol after that and saw where all of the chairs were lined up, then made our way back to the train station.  This time, our walk was about 20 minutes (an estimate, since we made so many stops), compared to our earlier route that took 1-1.5 hours.  The train station was chaotic.  We saw people arriving in tuxedos and ball gowns, which, of course, made me quite jealous.  So many people were late for their trains (MARC) that they decided not to go by the times on tickets but instead by the numbers–so first train out goes at whatever time it gets out, then the second train goes, then the third…etc.  Well, we were supposed to be the last train out, originally scheduled for departure at 8:11.  The line was so long to get in to the area where you could get to the platform, we decided to sit down for a few minutes (which was hard to do, there wasn’t much room!) then get in line around 7, and it moved very
fast, and then it turned out they didn’t care what train you were scheduled for, they were just filling the trains and counting people–so we got on an hour early.

We finally got back to Penn Station at 8:30 and caught the shuttle that runs between the Homewood Campus and JHMI.  I’m not exactly sure when I got back to my room, but I took a quick shower and then I was definitely in bed by 9:30.  It was an incredible day, one that I will never, ever forget, and I’m so glad to have been a part of it in the capital city where it was all taking place (even if I couldn’t fully see everything).  I was cold, sore, tired, and cranky when I finally went to bed, but it was absolutely, positively worth it.