PHOTOS: BALTIMORE

Click HERE for photos of our weekend in Baltimore.

SEWERS, ABBA & THE AMISH

BEST INVITE OF TODAY: Alison called to invite us to a game of nighttime frisbee on the Mall tonight! Unfortunately we were too exhausted by the time we got home, but will SO be there next time!

We had a delicious brunch at a cafe down the road from Susan's flat, on Anne's recommendation. It was a really cool place, with lots of lanterns hanging from the ceiling, tasty food and particularly cool loos (left), where the walls are lined with album covers.

As we were finishing up, who should we see leaving, but the family from Cafe Hon yesterday! And one of the boys was still wearing a nice string of beads!

We took a tantalising and misguided saunter around the shops after brunch, before packing up and going into town. We visited a particularly cool bookshop which looked like my friend Tom's ideal store - all comics and McSweeneys and rare DVDs.

I didn't really feel the need to linger in Baltimore much longer, but it felt like a waste of the car hire to go back to DC at lunchtime, so we took Anne up on another of her recommendations and went to the Baltimore Museum of Public Works. It's a sewer museum. I obviously had my doubts, but Anne had been so adamant that it was really good and all her other suggestions had been so spot-on that we thought there must be a good reason to go.

Erm, unfortunately it was really boring and a little stinky. I couldn't quite work if they were going for the conceptual, smell-o-vision museum thing or not, but - contrary to the sign outside which proclaimed it to be 'the surprisingly interesting Baltimore Public Works Museum - it was just really boring. I had a bit of fun on a computer game where you drive a massive rubbish truck around Baltimore, but I kept veering onto the pavement and mowing down cars and got the impression that Max was getting a little twitchy about surviving the drive back to DC, so packed that in.

I wasn't sad to leave Baltimore, though am glad we went and would definitely like to go to the baseball again, but there's a weirdy trolley/train that goes straight from DC to outside the stadium on Friday nights, so I think we'd do that in future, rather than sticking around for the whole weekend.

On the way out of town, we drove through Little Italy and managed to find the old, pre-Inner Harbour centre with a cathedral and big statue of Washington. But neither made me any fonder of the place. Max really liked it, though.

It was so early when we got back to DC that after we dropped the car off, we decided to go and see 'Mama Mia'. It was indescribably hot, so the thought of being in an aggressively air conditioned cinema for a couple of hours really appealed. We were basically liquid forms of ourselves by the time we reached the cinema, only to discover that it was sold out!

Extremely reluctantly, I agreed to go back to Union Station, where we'd just dropped off the car, and where there's the weird horrid cinema there, which has bad sound and a deficient projectionist. We hadn't been there since seeing '21' a few months ago and I wasn't too keen to go back, but it all turned out ok.

I wouldn't say that the film was worth the odyssey it took to get there and I was sad to see Colin Firth surrender his dignity, but it was fun enough and the music was ace. It annoyed me that Pierce Brosnan is so handsome (and sings like a bear with an itch), because he was the only really unpleasant person I ever looked after on 'Parkinson', but Julie Walters was hilarious and I just know that Mum's going to love the film.

I much more enjoyed 'Witness', which we watched when we got back to the flat. We'd put it on our NetFlix queue after our visit to Amish country in Pennsylvania, because Max has never seen it and I haven't seen it for years. It's such a terrific film - all mood and tension and atmosphere and I'd forgotten what an adorable little boy Lukas Haas was, now that he's a slightly gangly grown up.

BAWLMER

MOST SATISFYING BAR EXPERIENCE TODAY: being able to follow the second Orioles/Tigers game on TV tonight with some interest and a little excitement.

Oh my goodness, it's been SO hot today. Bleurgh. Hooray for our car having a/c and also at least it's just been a very hot heat, rather than heinously humid.

So it turns out that Susan lives in a really nice area. It mostly just consists of one main street that runs along about three short blocks, but it's really pretty and has nice boutiques and cafes. Hampden is the heart of John Waters' world and we went for brunch at Cafe Hon, which celebrates the big beehives and horn-rimmed glasses of John Waters movies.

There's a little boutique in the corner of Cafe Hon, pedaling tat like plastic flamingoes and Cafe Hon glasses and stuff and we watched with amusement as three boys between the age of about 3 - 7 raided this boutique of its most flamboyant items, bedecking themselves in beads, feather boas, sunglasses and visors, all of which were very at odds with their baseball t-shirts! We got the sense that their father was a little mortified, as he made them take everything off. But just as he was unravelling one boy from a moulting boa, another was making a bee-line for something else distinctly feminine and flamboyant!

After brunch we wandered around a really nice boutique - a little like Joy in London - across the road from Susan's flat, then got in the car and went into town. Lots of the streets were blocked off for some street event, so we headed out to an out-of-town mall. On the way out of town, we kept our eyes peeled for blocks like on 'The Wire'. I was particularly keen to see somewhere like Hamsterdam. But then I realised that all that really is is a scuzzy and slightly threatening row of houses in a rundown area, and to expect to be excited by such a sight would be akin to a 'Shameless' fan being wild about Manchester's council estates.

As such, I found Baltimore a little scuzzy and gross, but got a bristle of excitement when we saw (and sped past) houses that looked like Snoop had been there with her nailgun.

Forgive me - I know an out-of-town mall's not the most edifying first stop for a visitor to a new and historic city, but it had shops in it that we don't have in DC! Anyway, I didn't manage to buy anything. Except an eraser and a pencil sharpener - I've been looking for those for ages and found them in a massive arts and crafts emporium that would've been a dream to the Fimo-obsessed 11-year old Soph!

We left the scary Stepford mall as soon as possible and went back into town, where we followed Anne's advice and visited the American Visionary Art Museum. She'd warned us that the museum itself is really expensive and pretty patchy, but that the giftshop rocks. And sure enough, it does! It reminded me of toyshops I used to go to when I was little, because it was just crammed with trinkets and boxes of little things, with stuff hanging from the ceiling and the walls busy with pictures you could buy.

There was enough visionary art outside the museum for us to get our fill, including an enormous shiny mosaic egg, a gigantic guitar and a big hand emerging from the building, as if giving away the location of the rest of the body belonging to the Monty Python foot.

Right opposite the museum Federal Hill Park, which overlooks the city, so we went up there to get a look at the Inner Harbour area, which has been redeveloped and swankified to persuade people that Bawlmer (as the locals call it) is a nice place to visit. It kind of isn't, really. The city reminds me of Philadelphia, in that quite rundown, no real cohesion way and the Inner Harbour is just really aggressively modern and souped-up.

There was a wedding party up on the hill, having their photos taken with the Inner Harbour as their backdrop, which seemed a strange decision to me, but I guess if you love Baltimore, then that's a good place to go.

We were boiling by the time we got down the hill to the Inner Harbour, so got some lishy sorbets then went up to the top of the World Trade Centre - the world's tallest pentagonal building - where you get panoramic views of the city and beyond, from 423 ft up.

It was as exciting as looking at any city from very high up ever is, but fun to spot the Orioles stadium where we were last night. As we were leaving, we spotted a suspicious abandoned brown paper bag full of something (ie not all scrumpled up and obviously empty) and told the giftshop girl, who very boldly just went over and picked it up. Turned out just to be some food.

So unimpressed were we by the Inner Harbour, that we decided not to have supper there, but head to a place Anne had recommended, called O'Donnell Square. But before we did, we hit Filene's Basement - Max's favourite store of designer bargains - where Max snapped up some sunglasses, swimming trunks and Lucky Brand top for something stupid like $40.

O'Donnell Square was really nice and reminded me a bit of a French place, as it was a rectangle of grass and trees lined with glowing bars and restaurants. We had supper at The Speakeasy Saloon & Dining House, where Max had the most enormous steak I've ever seen - it was wider and higher than any slab of meat really should be, if consumed by but one person.

Hampden was buzzing when we got back to Susan's flat, so we dropped off our bags and went for a wander up and down the main street. Much to my don't-shop-on-Sunday dismay, the street is lined with fabulous little boutiques of dresses and trinkets and I saw a couple of lovely dresses in windows, but unfortunately won't be able to go and snap them up tomorrow, due to my pesky principles. Ah well.

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME

BIGGEST BASEBALL MISUNDERSTANDING TONIGHT: I thought people were booing an Orioles player, but in fact they were chanting Luuuuuuke, cos that was his name. It's like when people chant Bruuuuuuce at a Springsteen concert, which I also mistook for booing at first.

I had to do my half day of online US election stuff this morning, then this evening we picked up a hire car and skipped town to go to Baltimore, to watch the Orioles play the Detroit Tigers.

It took about an hour and a half to get to Baltimore in the rush hour Friday night traffic, but it was really exciting when we finally reached Camden Yards - the stadium. We got half-price tickets ($25 each) on the internet that we had to pick up there, so I never quite believed that we were actually going to see the game. I thought we'd get to the collection window and be laughed out of town with our plausible-looking reference number.

But sure enough, it worked (must learn to trust the internet. I hear it's the future) and we had great seats - just 4 rows back from the front and at a really good angle so we could see all the action. The stadium was recently renovated in a kind of cool old-fashioned way and there was a really exciting atmosphere there.

It was a little stressful, finding a food place that sold hot dogs (who runs out of hot dogs at a ballgame?!) and then a little tricksy trying to get our many hot dogs, chips, beer and souvenir jug of Coke back to our seats (I now need to stop being bemused about why I was a bigger size in Lucky Brand the other week!). But once we were settled, it was really good fun and we drank up the atmosphere. We got there in the 4th inning and the Tigers were 3-2 up. But then for about 3 innings, nothing really happened - no-one scored.

In a wonderful twist of fate, my disastrous softball experience came in really handy, as I managed to employ my new-found knowledge of those rules to understand better the baseball game! It was great - I was getting all excited when a batter had been pitched 3 'balls' and was about to get a 'walk' and stuff.

Max has been singing, whistling and faux-trumpeting 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame' all week, so was thrilled when the ENTIRE stadium stood up and sang it during the 7th inning stretch! And another fun diversion during the changeover of innings was the 'Kiss-Cam', which was hilarious - cameras would beam shots onto the big screen of a random couple sitting in the crowd and if you saw yourself on the screen, you had to kiss and everyone cheered. It was just really funny, because every single couple's reaction was exactly the same: when the camera found them, they'd still be smiling about the previous couple, then they'd realise with wide eyes and open mouths that they were on the screen and then scrappily kiss each other - invariably with the man being way more into it than the mildly mortified woman.

Eventually people started scoring again and there were a couple of home runs, which were excited and accompanied by fireworks. There were also a healthy number of Mexican waves, which was fun. Max informed me that they get their name from their popularity during the Mexico Olympics, rather than coming from Mexico itself.

I managed to miss the moment when the Orioles stole victory from the jaws of the Tigers, as I needed to go to the loo. But I was back in time to see the Orioles mascot do a victory lap and a spectacular firework display - way better than DC on 4th July.

Our trusty satnav (mercifully better than the one we had in Pennsylvania) got us to Anne's sister apartment very smoothly after the game. She lives about 20 mins drive out of town but we didn't really get much of a sense of the city as we drove through the night. Susan's apartment is in Hampden (she's living in New York all summer, which is how come we could have her flat for the weekend), which seems like a nice neighbourhood. Her street - the excellently named Roland Avenue - is lined with quite scuzzy looking houses with overgrown front yards and we were bracing ourselves for an 'authentic' Baltimore experience, preparing to throw ourselves into life a la 'The Wire', until we realised that Susan's apartment is in a really fancy redeveloped red brick building at the end of the street. Suddenly the thought of A/C and no cockroaches was terribly appealing.

Susan's apartment is an archetypically cool new apartment, with lots of exposed brickwork and a kind of mezzanine level where the bed is. It's pretty small, but way cooler than we were expecting. I must confess to being a little stumped by the lack of TV, but we checked out funny photos of Anne when she was a teenager and chatted, just like in the old days.

WHEN BLOGGERS GO BAD

After our late night West Wing blowout last night, I woke up at 11am. While this wouldn't usually be a problem and is most befitting a lady of leisure such as myself, I'd unfortunately made plans with Anne for this morning, so had her knocking on the door and brandishing frozen yoghurt at 11.15am. Fro yo for breakfast isn't so nice. But it was good to see Anne and get the keys to her sister's flat in Baltimore, where we're going this weekend to watch a baseball game and try not to get shot while scoping out locations from 'The Wire'.

Anne had to go off to pick a car up for a trip she and Hugh are taking this weekend, then came back over for lunch. My palate still wasn't quite in the mood for Greek salad a mere 90 mins after I woke up, but I soldiered on and it was great to gossip with Anne.

I was MORTIFIED and then FURIOUS this afternoon when Max emailed me something that had popped up when he was Googling his own name (his story is that he wanted to see what happened, so he could give advice to his cousin who wanted to find his news stories). It turns out that the kudos of having your name put to your work (unlike most BBC online journalists) has a downside. And that downside is vitriolic, illiterate bloggers. Click here for the full horror. Poor Maxy - I want to hunt that girl down and poke her in the eye! At least Clinton lost... What an idiot. Grrrr. I felt all 'Godfather' for most of the afternoon - 'eh, you dishonour my family...'. Grrr.

I was meant to play tennis with Jean (State Dept girl who learned tennis in Bogota) tonight, but the queue for the court was really long so we went for a drink instead. Max came along to meet Jean, which was good because Jean's starting a new job in a couple of weeks, where her job will be looking after foreign journalists at events like the conventions. Handy! We went back to the courts after our drink, but there was still a queue, so we reluctantly left it.

Max and I went for supper at Afterwords, where we shared the MOST divine dessert EVER. It was sumptuous chocolate brownies smothered in hot fudge sauce, topped with vanilla ice cream and sprinkled with nuts! Mmmmm. So bad and yet so very very good.

It was funny not to have 'The West Wing' to watch when we got home, but nice to re-discover actual TV and feel part of the real world again.

AND SO THE END IS HERE...

NUMBER OF LICENCE PLATES LEFT TO SPOT: 6!! Alaska, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Utah and Nevada.

Monday this week was the first day I had where I had nothing to do. I haven't been given any TV work since before the Pennsylvania/Tess & Bob/4th July week and don't even have any errands to run! So that afternoon, after lunch with Maxy at Dupont Circle, I sat and watched 'Gone Baby Gone' - another of the NetFlix DVDs we've ignored for weeks.

It's Ben Affleck's directorial debut and I had no idea it was based on a Dennis Lehane novel (I really like him. He's one of the writers on 'The Wire' and 'Mystic River' is an adaptation of one of his other books). It didn't get a theatrical release in the UK because of its similarities with the Madeleine McCann case. And sure enough, the little girl who gets abducted does look eerily like Madeleine McCann and she's taken after her mother leaves her sleeping to go to a bar. So I thought it was going to be all about the distress of parents who lose their child. But it totally isn't - it's a really twisty tense thriller in which the abduction of the child - or at least her mother's distress - is really secondary to what else is going on.

I couldn't work out if it's a good film independent of Lehane's excellent story and writing, so couldn't really discern whether Ben Affleck is much cop as a director. But I really like Casey Affleck, who plays the lead guy and Amy Ryan (also Beadie from 'The Wire') is terrific as the crackwhore mother and totally deserved her Oscar nomination (take note, Saoirse Ronan).

That evening, we went for a really nice dinner with Anne at an Eritrean restaurant, just down the road. Well, the meal was actually horrible, but the company was great and the three of us had a really fun evening. We were tempted to go to the Belgian restaurant at the end of our street, because it was having an enormous Bastille Day celebration (I'm not sure anyone had the heart to point out France and Belgium are different...) but it was a little hectic, with men running around in French maid outfits and others in big powdery wigs.

So we opted for Eritrean and, in typical sod's law fashion, I decided to come off the wagon that evening as I fancied a glass of wine for the first time in weeks. But I forgot to take my ID so was denied! Gnaaah.

The food was a little grody. I didn't like the big pancakey things that you wrap the meat up in, because I don't like pancakes and these ones expand in your stomach and make you feel gross by the end of the meal (Max and I both had upset tummies the next day). But as is becoming something of a habit, we spotted Max's friend Oliver as we were finishing up supper! He was wandering past with some other girl from The Guardian this time.

That same day, Max had finally managed to get to the doctors to get a prescription for the asthma medicine he really needs, having run out of it ages ago. He got a prescription for 10 inhalers, to last him the whole of the rest of our time here, and went to the pharmacy to pick it up, only to be asked for $200!!! Our insurance will pay him back, but not until 3 weeks from the date of his claim, so he has to stump up the money in advance. Who can afford to do that?!

But WAY more astonishing is that once Max had handed over the money, he only got one inhaler back, not 10! I was exasperated when he told me, convinced he'd made a mistake and that the pharmacy owe him a further 9 inhalers. It's not revolutionary medicine, it's taken on a daily basis and half the world has asthma, so how could it possibly be practical for the medication to be so extortionate? And how come it only costs £6 back home? Surely $200 for 10 makes more sense - $20 each and all that...

So Max duly went back to the pharmacy while I researched his medication on the internet and sure enough, we both discovered almost simultaneously that it is indeed $200 per inhaler! Have you ever heard anything so outrageous?!? It only made me more desperate for Obama to win the election so he can introduce his healthcare plan. Aye carumba.

On Tuesday I played tennis with Caroline, who was the one I had that amazing game with a few weeks ago. We went back to the same courts as before (no sign of the omnipresent Micah this time - it was softball night), but there was a really long queue and people were really aggressive towards me when I asked when they'd be finishing, so we ended up having to drive to different courts, in the north east of DC, in Caroline's lovely new swanky convertible car.

Unfortunately, after all that hassle, I then proceeded to play like a monkey with limited motor skills. It was so awful - I think I'd have been better off at softball! - especially as I'd been looking forward to playing with Caroline again for ages. There are few things that make me more grumpy than playing tennis badly.

Last night was much more fun - we went to hear the Marine Corps band play a free concert of dixieland jazz on the steps of the Capitol! We went with Alison, whose downstairs neighbour plays in the band. Alison had heard him practising the night before and asked what he was up to and he invited her along. It was so much fun and such a classic example of why I like DC. It was a really nice balmy summer's evening, we had a picnic (featuring chicken nuggets and little else) and listened to this fantastic, Jeeves & Wooster-esque music as the sun went down over the Capitol in one direction and Washington monument in the other. No-one was really dancing, but I enjoyed jigging about and just wish Max and I knew how to do swing dancing, because we could've busted out our moves. There was a really cute little boy who was totally possessed by the music and flailing about all over the place in rapture.

Alison's neighbour was really good and was playing a most curious trombone - it had valves like a trumpet, rather than the traditional slide. Makes much more sense to me.

When we got home, the moment we always knew was coming finally arrived. We finished 'The West Wing'!! We finally have a life again and our NetFlix subscription will no longer go to waste! (we've been borrowing the WW DVDs off Anne and Megan). It took us until 1am, but we finally did it. To be honest, I haven't much enjoyed it since season 5 and though I love Santos like he is my husband and even have a soft spot for Arnold Vinick, I was the tiniest bit relieved when it was over. It had just been getting a bit too random lately - too many storylines introduced and then inexplicably abandoned and a bit too much pandering to the audience, I reckon. Still, I've learned a massive amount about American politics, so the election should be a blast!

PHOTOS: VINEYARD

Click HERE for photos of our trip to the Hillsborough vineyard in Virginia