Baltimore arrival

Since the last time I flew into or out of Dulles, the new Silver Line extension has been completed!  That means you no longer need to take a bus/coach along to the end of the line and transfer to the train.  It all looks very new still.

I was able to reload my Smartrip smart card for the trip to Union Station, for my onward journey to Baltimore.  I boiught a a coffee at McDonald's, which seemed to take ages for them to make.  I caught the midday train.  It's really bizarre - they don't announce the platform/track for the train until the last minute, but have you queueing up along the concourse, back around corners, for miles.  Occasionally, people would come around the corner and ask "is this for [train number] 134??"  "Yes!" "Oh."

It doesn't take very long to get to Baltimore, but this time, I knew exactly where I was going when I got there.  So I got the free Purple Circulator bus down to a block away from my hotel.

I was able to get straight into my room at just after 2pm, and I went to sleep for a few hours straight away as I was feeling so tired.

Then I went out for some dinner, to McKormick and Schmick's - the same chain as the night before in San Francisco.  My dinner last night "only" cost $70, because I joined the Landry's Select Club a few years back and they give me a birthday reward that is available for 4 weeks starting from my "birthday", which I told them was 1st September so that I could always use the reward when I was in the USA!  It's $25 free that I might as well have.  The dinner tonight was about the same as I didn't have much.

I am still really tired, though, and I have to be up fairly early because the hotel stops serving breakfast at 9am!

It seems this hotel was a very old bank that's been converted into a hotel, possibly via being apartments at some point.  They retained some of the features, such as this (non-working) mail chute that runs from the top to the bottom of the building.  In the basement, they also have a meeting room called the Bank Vault.

Although there are occasional bits of peeling paint in places, it doesn't feel run-down like the Harborplace Renaissance that I stayed in last year.  It just feels old, and they are continually maintaining it, going by the smell of the wood treatments and what I suspect is paint, but thankfully not detectable inside my room.