Good morning, Baltimore!

I've been singing songs from Hairspray all day.
The internet situation could be better here. Ok, here's what hostels need to do. Put up a sheet of paper on the wall marked "internet" with details on it. Not so hard. They don't know the name of their connection, there may be a password and it may be their phone number, the router is probably in the library but that's closed and they don't know why I'm only getting one status bar out of five.
I'm trying to move to different places to find a stronger connection somewhere. No luck yet. I tried sitting the the kitchen but some nerds came in for an anime convention and started playing war games at the table beside me. Now I don't mind nerds, one is from Sudbury, and they all seem pretty friendly. It's more the fact that they unplugged the air conditioner as it was blowing away their battle cards when it is already hotter than the fires of Hell in here. This place has window air conditioners instead of central air. Stupid environment.
I hate the environment. Now all these places are turning up the heat (including my work) to be 'green' when really they're too damn cheap to pay the hydro bill. Of course so am I and I may be disconnected by the time I get back, but this is not about me. Everywhere should have central air so cold I can wear pants and a long sleeve shirt to work.
Also while I'm on a conservative rant, this fellow who cut off someone's head on a public bus? Kill him. If you kill a stranger in a public place with more than 10 witnesses, you die. All part of my new electoral platform.
Anyway, I'm on vacation!
I took a cab to the bus terminal this morning as my bag is too heavy to carry. I studied the ticket and it said an extra bag was $3. Of course when I get to the station the price has gone up to $10 for an extra bag due to 'gas prices' or 'the environment' or some other Liberal garbage that means Adam gets the old screw job.
So I get to the counter and the lady wants to weigh my bag. I know it's over the 50 lb limit as I can't lift it so I take out the computer and put it on the scale. Two pounds over. So I remove the battery pack and we're good!
At this point my carry on luggage is a shoulder bag, a duffel bag which weighs about 50 lbs, my computer, the battery pack, and a Walmart grocery bag with my shoes in it and a couple shirts. And I am only allowed one small carry-on. Screwed, blued, tattooed. (what is blued?)
Anyway, for some reason she let me though and as soon as I was out of sight of her I stuffed all the stuff back into my bag and was off!
Baltimore is quite nice. The hostel is the second cheapest I'm staying at and is the best one so far. After I got here, I walked around to see the Washington Memorial:

and some cool nudie statues around the perimeter, representing peace, war, etc.

I then found this amazing museum that was free, that I loved, The Walters Art Museum, the best I have been to by far.
They had some stunning works, the one below is a man describing to his family the sights he saw fighting in the war:


I loved the feet on the painting above. The entire collection of 19th century art was exquisite, I loved it all.
Afterwards I had a rainbow salad in the restaurant which was also amazing. Mixed greens with yams, red peppers, sunflower seeds and artichoke with a balsamic dressing served with caraway and sesame seed crisps.
Then off to see the grave of Edgar Allen Poe:

And the Holocaust Memorial:

The above, in the background, is supposed to represent two rail cars side by side with a quote on them. The best was this statue:

Now that to me says Holocaust. You want people to run for their lives from the memory of this event, not like that pop art Euro trash in Berlin.
Then I started walking to the contemporary art museum, which was near a very large hill which took me about 10 minutes to climb. (there were guys running up and down it, past me, for exercise, marveling at how I took one step every 30 seconds.) Excellent view from the top:

and finally to the Contemporary Art Museum, which seems designed by John Waters himself.

There was no photos allowed but I got a shot in the shed of robot chess pieces:

and in the bookstore I got a book on the history of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys for $7.
On the way back, after waiting out the rain, I got a good shot of this boat in the harbour:

Tomorrow the Entertainment Museum with cool stuff like an entire wall of memorabilia from the 60's Batman TV show. Museum of Industry and the ball game. After tomorrow I will have been in every American League East ballpark, I've been looking forward to this game the most.