In April 2012, my wifey and meself went on a whirlwind trip around the UK and Paris, visiting relatives, attending a wedding, and having ourselves a bit of a honeymoon 🙂

We both got to meet lots of new people (new to one or the other usually), see great new sights, get rained on a lot, eat great food, dance like no one was looking, and generally have a blast.

Read all about it and see a bunch of iffy pictures here…

If you just want to see the full size pictures, you can, but you’ll miss out on my brilliant commentary.

(Go straight to the pictures)

Last weekend we decided to head down to Baltimore to check out the inner harbor, since S had never been there. It was a bit of a grey and rainy day, but we guaranteed that the rain would stop by buying an umbrella for S to use 😉

I’d been receiving coastal flooding warnings for days on the weather app for my phone and now we could see why. The water in the harbor was all the way up the level of the walkway! I seem to remember it being a few feet lower than that on my previous visits. By the time we left in the evening, it was even lapping up over the edge…

We started the day with a walk around the harbor to see what was where, then headed up Federal Hill to get a view over the harbor. There, we were greeted with a bit of entertainment as pair of angry joggers chased a couple of yobs on a mini-bike out of the park. Braver than I, is all I’ll say. I would think that the odds are good that the youth of Charm City would be fairly well armed.

After a pretty good lunch at the Rusty Skupper (touristy, but we enjoyed it), we headed back around to the first of our historic ships, the USS Constellation. I’ve walked by this several times and thought it would be cool to check out, so I’m glad that S was able to talk me into it this time! This is a Civil War-era ship with a very cool history, that has been very nicely restored inside and out.

It’s much bigger on the inside than I would have thought from looking at it, kind of like a nautical TARDIS! It held 300ish crew on 4 decks, tons of cargo space, lots of cannons. I can’t believe how complicated the rigging and sails are. Very cool!

Next was the USS Torsk, a WWII-era submarine (the one parked over by the aquarium). While the Constellation was all spacious on the inside, the Torsk was uber-cramped and complicated, with every surface covered in switches, dials, pipes, etc. I can’t imagine being stuck in one of those under the ocean. Nightmare!

We then walked around the dock to see the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse. This used to be out in the bay, but was moved to the inner harbor to be part of the maritime museum along with the four ships. Must have been a very very very very lonely and boring job. Maybe it was good for aspergers guys.

We still had two ships left on the tickets (4 for 1 with AAA discount), but decided to call it a day after that, so that’s it for Baltimore adventure #2 for H&S.

Go here for the complete gallery of pictures…

Here are a few pictures from an outing in Ripon. Most of them are of the cathedral, which you must admit is very scenic!

Here are some pictures from a day trip to Castle Howard.

Back at the end of June, I took an extra-long weekend trip to Paris. I went there a long time ago, and I don’t remember it being so cool. Definitely worth another trip.

Here are the pics from my trip to Hawaii back in Feb… It sure was nice to see the sun, I’d almost forgotten what it looked like 😉

This is an old set of pictures from a trip I took down to London in Dec 2007. It was a decent trip in some iffy weather, and was an opportunity to learn the hard way that there is absolutely no transportation operating in England on Dec 25th!

As you can see, it was a bit foggy 😉

A couple of weeks ago, we went on a trip to Lisbon, Portugal. It was a great way to spend a long weekend, and a pretty cool city.

Check out the pictures and stuff, and let me know what you think!

By the way, I did make a new year’s resolution to post more on this page, but it takes me a while to get things done. Obviously. 🙂

Here is a short set of pictures from 2003. They are from a short trip to Maryland’s Eastern shore and Chincoteague, one day after Hurricane Isabel hit the area. Slowly catching up!

This is another old one, from the summer of 2003. I went to the DC Arboretum with a couple of friends. It was no Kew Gardens, but it’s the best garden in the area, IMHO.