FInal full day in Baltimore

 Today was a day game for a change, so there was no lovely sunset to see.  In fact, the weather forecast wasn't very good at all, so I made a dinner reservation for later than usual just in case there was a couple of hours delay due to rain.

However, the Weather Channel proved to be wrong again.  Although it was cloudy, it didn't rain until after the game was over.

I was further around the third base side today, in case it had been sunny, as this area is always in the shade during day times - but it was cloudy!

This was a terrifically exciting game, with the Orioles one game ahead in the division with only a couple of weeks to go in the regular season.  There was much despair in the crowd when Tampa Bay scored twice in the 8th inning to take a 3-1 lead.   However, star catcher Adley Rutschmann hit a home run in the home team's 8th to close to 3-2 and then down to their final out and strike, the Orioles' Frazier hit a double and scored a run to send the game into extra innings.

In the 10th, the Rays scored again only for the Orioles to tie the game with a last-gasp run again.  They hold Tampa off the board in the 11th and finally Cedric Mullins drove in the winning run in the bottom of the 11th and the place went absolutely wild.  The video I took doesn't really convey how loud it was and that the stands were shaking: the moment Cedric Mullins won the game

The win meant that the Baltimore Orioles have clinched a play-off spot.  Interestingly, with results elsewhere, Tampa Bay also claimed a play-off spot at the same time - but they didn't celebrate on the field!  As is traditional, the Orioles had a load of special tops for the team to wear as soon as they clinched a spot.  

Obviously, it can be a bit risky manufacturing things that proclaim that you won something.  Each year, one of of the teams that loses in the World Series has this problem: that's why there are sometimes pictures of people in deepest parts of Africa wearing clothes that mention events that never came to pass, as often teams will donate them to avoid wasting them.

Saturday 16th September

 I've been feeling better, but I didn't really go anywhere much today.

However, I did to to the game in the evening and having lost 4 games in a row and allowed the Tampa Bay Rays to draw level at the top of the division, the Orioles snapped their losing streak and won the game, so there were lots of fireworks to celebrate the win

Harbour Connector

The transport options available in Baltimore seem to have changed since I was last there.  I'm sure the water taxis used to run every day, even after Labor Day, but now they only run on Saturdays and Sundays.  There is the free Harbour Connector boat, which does run Wednesday to Friday, but it is only three routes.  These boats are an extension of the Charm City Circulator coloured bus routes - the Purple route is ideal for me to go between Penn Station and my hotel, rather than relying on the Light Rail, which cost money and is further away from my hotel.

So I took two boats along to the far end of the harbour for a much longer walk around the harbour today, back along the waterfront past Fells Point and then back to the hotel before going out to dinner.

This lighthouse is a historical preservation, not an active one as it wouldn't do much good here!

 

There are a lot fewer people about now that summer has been declared over, and lots of things are closed.  I took a lot of photos today which are in the shared album that is shared with a few people as I moved westwards along the harbourside.

Friday night's game between the Rays and the Orioles was a rare sell-out, so I wasn't able to get tickets.  I imagine this is because of the retirement ceremony for a former Orioles player.  That meant I could go to dinner in the evening without a rush, having had the whole day to walk about, despite still feeling ill.   Last night and today have been the worst of it, so I hope it's going to start getting better now.

Here are some of the highlights of the walk.

 

Around the harbour and the Rays series

Unfortunately, I now seem to have a very bad cold - or rather something scratched my throat a couple of days ago and it's going to take a week for it to get better.

 

I did go for another walk around the harbour on Thursday, not going too far.  I walked around to the Rusty Scupper restaurant and had this view across the harbour whilst having dinner.

I saw birds having a bath at the side of the road where the sprinklers had been watering the plants and drained off into a puddle at the side of the road.

 

I did feel well enough to go to the game anyway, which was the first game of a 4 game series against the Tampa Bay Rays - who are the Baltimore Orioles big rivals for the AL East division.  I haven't been able to get a ticket for game 2 on Friday night.

One visitor has made an early appearance - you don't often see this man at baseball games, just at NFL games once it gets to December - even though he was famously booed by the tough crowd in Philadelphia a few years back.

Harbour

 I didn't really do a lot on Wednesday as I wasn't feeling that well.  It's still picturesque.

Again, it was Bark at the Park night and all the dogs were with their owners over on the left hand side in the bottom section, just along from bullpens.  The setting sun always lights up the warehouse in an amazing way.

Trip to Baltimore

I decided to eat in the hotel bar this morning since my train was due to leave at 11:02 and I wanted to leave 45 minutes to get to the railway station (it's 30 minutes walk away, but I wanted to go on the subway as it's quicker with luggage)  

The location of this hotel really is superb.  I took these two photos to show the balcony at night and then again in the morning.

I'd booked  a ticket on the grandly named "Silver Star" service that runs all the way from New York to Miami, even though I was only going as far as Baltimore.  It takes in a day and a half to get all the way to southern Florida!  However, the seats are really comfortable and spacious.

The journey was delayed departing for 20 minutes or so, but that gave me time to buy an iced coffee at the station in the brand new train hall that has been added at Penn Station which is light, airy and clean!

I had intended to take the Light Rail service down to the centre of Baltimore, but Google Maps suggested I should take the Purple line of the Charm City Circulator instead - Charm City is the nickname of Baltimore.  This bus service is free and passes the railway station and dropped me two blocks from my hotel, which was very convenient.

I had to wait an hour to get into my room - I had arrived at 2pm, which is before you're supposed to be able to check-in - and then I was able to go down to the stadium for the evening's game between the St Louis Cardinals and the Baltimore Orioles.

It's about a 15 minute walk to the stadium from my hotel.  Previously, I've stayed in hotels closer to the ballpark, but it's much better being here at the Inner Harbor near most of the restaurants and tourist attractions and then walking out to the stadium.

It was "Bark at the Park" night (and again on Wednesday) with people in one of the sections permitted to bring a dog with them to the ballpark.  There were lots of dog-related entertainments in between innings.

 

The stadium was only half full, despite Baltimore being top of its division and looking strong for the play-offs.  However, getting tickets for the next series where the Tampa Bay Rays are in town was considerably harder and, in fact, not possible for Friday night as it was entirely sold-out.  So that night, I'm going to see if I can find something else to do in the evening.

Today, I also managed to book an AirBNB in Washington DC - it's about a third of the price than a hotel would have been and it's got lots of top reviews, so that should be nice.

Rockaway Beach, Mets

My love/hate relationship with the Weather Channel app took another turn for the worse today, as it promised a storm-filled afternoon, with the trouble starting around 2pm.  I had decided to go for a walk along Rockaway beach out at the end of the 'A' subway line, so despite it being warm and sunny, I took my coat with me when I left around 10am.  Not having the hotel breakfast has allowed me to set off earlier in the day than I would have done previously, so I thought that I would go as far along the beach as I could until the weather turned and then get on the subway back to the city and dash back the one block to the hotel.

It took nearly two hours to get to Rockaway Park, as despite it being the same line, I had to change at Rockaway Boulevard and again at Braod Channel for the shuttle to the end of the line.  I walked along the shoreline, able to paddle in the remarkably warm - or rather not-bitterly-cold -  Atlantic Ocean.  I stopped for a beefburger for lunch at Rippers as it had good reviews - and it was the only thing still open now that the summer season is over as far as the USA is concerned.  This also meant that the place was almost deserted apart from a few surfers and a handful of people sunbathing.

It would have been a peaceful walk along the beach if it weren't for it being on the flight path for JFK airport, which meant a steady stream of large jets passing low overheard.  I saw planes that were going to Saudi Arabia, India and South Korea as well as to various places across the USA.

After a couple of hours in total, I decided to head back to my hotel and prepare to go to the Mets game in the evening.  The subway train goes along a narrow strip of low land across the water, so as you look out of the window, it seems like the train is surfing along the top of the water - I imagine it must have to close fairly often when there are storms.  I got back to the hotel, with the weather still hot and sunny and having had to carry my coat around all day.

I bought my ticket for the Arizona Diamondbacks at the New York Mets game.  About an hour later, there was a huge thunderstorm with torrential rain.  Again, the game's start was delayed.  Often, if the weather is dodgy and it's not the last game of a series, they'd call a game like this off and schedule a double-header the next day, but it was obvious the game was going to be played eventually - especially being 11th September, as there were lots of pre-game commemoration ceremonies planned.   Once the sun had come out in Manhattan, I decided to go to the stadium.  I had dinner in the Caesar's club, which was a lovely place to eat - you have a view over the field from behind the left-field foul pole and can sit there watching the game as you eat and catching the replays on the TVs dotted around too.  I'd finished by the end of the 3rd inning, so I was able to watch the rest of the game from my seat which was in a great position just in front of the press box.

Ellen's, Yankee Stadium

There was rain about in the morning and there were occasional flashes of lightning, so I decicded to not go up to Yankee Stadium for the advertised 13:35 game, but instead went to a local diner for brunch having not bothered with the $35 breakfast at the hotel.  In the past I think I have missed out on eating in nice places by sticking with hotel breakfasts, but especially when you've on Broadway, there's a huge choice of places.

I chose Ellen's Stardust Diner, albeit a little sceptical of the promise of singing serving staff, but I needn't have worried, as it was great.  All the serving staff are looking for their big break to get into a show.  You can also donate towards the scholarship fund that pays only for the staff's acting, singing and dancing lessons.  However, they take it in turns to perform right there in the middle of the diner up on a small catwalk or on the upper flor balcony - or sometimes walking around, one of them even delivering the bills to tables as he performed.  One minute my server Kayleigh was taking my order and submitting it and 30 seconds later, she was performing a duet of a Whole New World from Aladdin with another of the servers.  If you like the songs from the shows, you'd like this place: you get a nice mixture of older show tunes and newer ones, including whilst I was there: The Time Warp, YMCA, Circle of Life, Time to Say Goodbye, Come Fly With Me and many more.

I've not always had excellent weather in New York, notably being there for a tornado a few years back.  This time the problem was thunderstorms - and heavy ones.  Unfortunately, the Weather Channel app was incredibly inconsistent with its forecasts - it was far more reliable to just look out the window for the current conditions.   As I expected, the start of the game between the Milwaukee Brewers and New York Yankees was delayed due to the lightning - the one form of weather they never take any risks with.  Having told me that there were going to be severe storms all afternoon, maybe drying up as it got dark, the weather cleared suddenly and the Weather Channel app suddenly changed it's mind and told me that there was no more rain due for the rest of the day.  Once they had a start time, I decided to head up to the stadium and buy a ticket there.  With the 2023 rules changes, notably the pitch clock, the games run much more quickly.  However, in the game, the pitching was on top and although Milwaukee had three hits, New York had none, so the game was already in the 6th inning of the scheduled 9 by the time I got to my seat.

 

In this stadium, I like the view from slightly higher up, and it was only $59 for this great view.  It probably helps that the Yankees are bottom of their division and totally out of the playoffs this year that meant it wasn't jam-packed.  In the end, despite having pitched 8 hitless innings, the Milwaukee starter Corbin Burnes was pulled from the game after those 8, as his team hadn't scored, so there was no officlal 9-inning no-hitter opportunity.  The game continued on into the 10th and then finally in the 11th inning, the Brewers managed to eke out a run, only for New York to finaklly get a hit and match it in the bottom of the inning. On to the 12th and the Brewers scored twice, only for Giancarlo Stanton to hit a 2-run home run to level the scores again.  On to the 13th, where New York finally held Milwaukee off the board and scratched out a run themselves to win the game 4-3.  So in the end, I still had 8 innings of a ballgame.

Sunday evening, I went to Virgil's Real BBQ for dinner and it was lightly drizzling again, contrary to the forecast, but it was only very light.

Flight to New York

 My driver arrived in good time for my 05:30 pickup and after a bit of chat at the start, had a quiet journey down to Heathrow, arriving just after 7am.  I had already seen last night that my plane had been an hour late leaving, so I expected that my flight would be delayed similarly, and indeed it was an hour late departing.  However, I was able to have breakfast in the lounge and wait there umtil it was ready to board.  As usual, the gate for my flight was right at the far end of the concourse.

Since I booked so late, I had had a limited choice of seats, and I was in a centre seat which has no view out of a window which was a shame, atlhough the view is only really important on take-off and landing.  The food was good and Kristy looked after our aisle very well.  Despite leaving 40 minutes late, we touched down on time at 13:08 and despite the Global Entry kiosk rejecting me (apparently because it's been so long since I visited the USA) I was able to go through the rejects lane rather than the very long standard queue.  All in all, I was past all the controls and customs in 20 minutes and then it was the Airtrain, 20 minute wait for the NJ Transit train to New York, the short subway trip uptown, finally arriving at my hotel at 15:08 - exactly two hours after touching down.

Pleasingly, and somewhat to my surprise, New York now lets you use phones and contactless cards for travel and my Mastercard operated the OMNY readers just fine every time.  They have automatic fare capping, but as usual for the USA, it works in a silly way: once you have made 12 trips, all subsequent trips for that week are free, but a week is always Monday-Sunday, so as I was there Saturday-Tuesday, that's two separate weeks, so I never hit the cap!

I decided not to race up to Yankee Stadium to see the second half of the afternoon's game, so I had a quiet dinner and Frankie & Johnny's steakhouse just a short distance from my hotel.

The M Social hotel is in a fabulous location - it's on 52nd Street about 50 yards off Broadway, just one or two blocks from a number of different subway lines.  The $40 daily resort fee is irritating, but includes a $10 bar credit - although I never used it, but the room was correspondingly cheaper than most of the other big hotels.  I would definitely stay here again.  Whilst we know that the USA has a different idea of how to name the different levels in a building, this one was special.  You enter at street level which the elevator calls "5".  You go to the lobby level, which is quite a way up - it's the only other floor that it goes to.  Despite there being a "trendy" and energetic vibe in the lobby and bar area, fortunately, you can't hear it at all up in the rooms, which start at level 1, then "FC" whatever that is, then 9 and all the way up to the 30s, excepting 13.

I had a distant view of the Hudson River from my window, although it wasn't so much to look at from the 18th floor. I hadn't been expecting to see wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plains or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, but it could have been nicer from a higher floor.  The bar area was fairly large and had a terrace that overlooks Broadway.

Getting ready to go

I've left it rather late to book everything this year, although I don't think I've ever set off without having all the hotels booked, but I don't have the last few days sorted out yet because it's turning out to be very expensive everywhere in Washington DC, so I'm continuing to look there.

I had the day off today to get ready, so I was able to do washing and get it all dried, and go into town to get a few last-minute things.

The usual car company I use for airport transfers is under new ownership now and they quoted a ridiculously high price to get me to Heathrow, so I'm going with a different company recommended by my manager at work.  They are coming to pick me up at 5.30am, with my flight due to take off at 10am.  I'm all checked-in and ESTA-approved and my Global Entry renewal has gone through in what seems like record time, so I'm all set to go in the morning.