Touring the Hometown

For the past couple of years, Mom and I (sometimes with Courtney in tow!) have celebrated Mother's Day and/or birthdays by seeing some local sites. A few weeks ago we had our belated celebration of both for 2014.

My agenda was to tour the famed Basilica, take B-more's free tour bus to the Inner Harbor to do some walking, and eat an early dinner in the Locust Point neighborhood. Would you believe I took Mom to the wrong church?? She knew it...but kept quiet as we enlightened ourselves on Universalist Unitarianism in a historic, 1817 church building that really didn't seem like the Basilica I'd remembered singing in with the Baltimore Choral Arts Society...so we still have a Basilica tour on the bucket list!

We got off the free tour bus at the Inner Harbor and walked to Federal Hill, then toured the Sculpture Garden at the American Visionary Arts Museum.

I have a genuine love for quirky art, especially if it's made of found items, recycled materials, or garbage. :) And Mom looks cute on that funky pink donkey! (Makes me wonder if Mom was ever in the Donkey Race in an RVR rodeo??)

While I'm not typically a fan of glittery items, I love all the mosaics using broken glass and mirrors. See Mom peeking out from behind the glittery egg?

The glittery mosaic bus. Someone thought, "I think I'll cover an entire bus with broken glass and all sorts of other random things (I think the hood of the bus contains bunches of plastic flowers and a plastic swan--the kind sometimes found on grandparents' lawns.)

Mom and I walked and walked and walked through Baltimore streets. Seriously, I wonder how many 70+ women walk as much as Mom did, and how many younger than that could have logged our 14,000 steps for the day?? (Like the dolphin fountain in this newer, upscale neighborhood?)

I managed to get us to the restaurant at the ONE hour of the day that the kitchen is closed. They still serve food--just nothing hot. We had a choice of about three salads. Again, Mom was super nice about it, and we enjoyed our salads al fresco. 

In retrospect, we should have walked around a little more and gone to one of the many corner restaurants in Locust Point. However, until we walked more AFTER our meal, I didn't know how many corner restaurants there WERE in Locust Point!

But those little oopses didn't dampen the experience of being together, and we enjoyed lots of walking and talking on an absolutely glorious day!