As you know, I took a week to visit family in Maryland and Delaware. Here is a list of the top 10 things I learned (or relearned) while visiting:
- Maryland style seafood is the best seafood around. Steamed blue crabs, steamed shrimp, steamed whatever, with a generous smothering of Old Bay seasoning...almost enough to make me move back.
- I'm not a fan of bluefish--or maybe it was just the way it was prepared at Fish On in Lewes, DE.
- Housing prices in the Baltimore/Washington corridor are unbelievable. Definitely enough to make me not move back. Here's what you can get for $300,000 in one of the least expensive suburbs of Baltimore. Here's what you can get for the same price in one of the most expensive suburbs of Columbus.
- Airport noise is...well...noisy. My parents' house is 2 miles from the end of a runway at BWI-Thurgood Marshall Airport. It's the runway that Southwest uses. From their backyard you can wave to the suspected terrorists and they wave back. OK, not really, but you can read everything on the side of the plane. Growing up I remember we would know to stop talking when a plane was going over. There is no way to even hear someone sitting right next to you. That used to be once every fifteen minutes or so. Now it's once every 2 minutes...all day. My kids made a game of counting how many airplanes went over. In two hours they counted 57.
- Driving over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to or from the eastern shore of Maryland gives you a breathtaking view of one of the most beautiful bodies of water in the world.
- Looks can be deceiving.
- People from Baltimore talk funny.
- I'm from Bawlmer.
- I've said it before and I'll say it again. Food in the U.S. is way too cheap. Just visit Cape Henlopen State Park beach on a hot summer day and you'll see what I mean.
- I make an awesome sand turtle (see right).
