8.08.2012 – 8.08.2012  29 °C

Early start this morning as we had to pick up our car from Union Square to finish the last part of our 5.5 month journey! Getting the car was pretty simple, subway ride a couple of stops and then up to the rental counter. The rental agency didn’t have the type of car we had ordered, or an upgrade option, so we were given a SUV. What a tank! We’ve got this huge American Chevy gas guzzler, not quite F250 style but big enough! Anyway, oodles of space and no other real options so we took it. Probably the best thing about it is that I now have my own climate controller in the back of the car so at least the temp is how I like it with the amount of air flow that I want!

Once we had the car we took off back to the hotel to pick up M and the junk. After a hasty pack job (everything now fits into the boot!) we headed west out of DC for the Maryland border. Our drive today took us thru most of western Maryland and half way down the Delaware peninsular to Easton.

By the time we made it to Annapolis, Md it was lunch time so we parked our car and wandered down to the  waterfront in search of some tucker. Our LP had recommended we pull into the Middleton Tavern for some food, so we decided to follow its advice and made a bee-line for the pub.

The town of Annapolis is an old fishing town. It’s been here since the mid 1700s so has the real Nth Eastern small town feel to it. The main street is filled with touristy shops that are the old painted style with big glass windows. I’ll say one thing for NE USA it sure is kitschy and beautiful! The town is also home to one of the big Naval colleges so we did see a few cadets wandering around in uniform (also some large looking boats docked a way out of town…). Either way this town is certainly not hard up for a buck, if it isn’t tourists spending their hard earned dough than it is the uni students!

Lunch was a tasty treat of seafood (although D did report that the oysters weren’t that crash hot)—good recommendation from the guide book—before we continued on east towards the Delaware peninsular. We crossed the large bridge that links the main part of Maryland with the small bit of land on the other side of the Chesapeake bay. This side of the bay is much less populated so our vista returned to farms! Quite nice after the hurley burley of DC. We stopped in at the little town of St Michael, Md on the Chesapeake Bay with a plan of stopping for the evening. The town was nice (some ladies at the visitor centre recommended we come here) but it is only nice if you haven’t seen cutesy sea side towns before. We’ve seen quite a few further up north that were far more cutesy and beautiful so we actually turned around and decided to find some cheaper accom further down the road.

We eventually found what we were looking for in the equally cutesy town of Easton Md. We found ourselves some cheap digs for the evening before M&D went hunting some dinner from the local grocery store.. Notice I write grocery store? If you say supermarket here you can sometimes get a blank look—American’s don’t really call the grocery store a supermarket.. so take my advice, if you want some food ask for a grocery store you’ll be far better off!!!

The digs we have stopped at this evening has an outdoor pool near our room, so D decided that tonight we were having a pool party and he was cooking us up some sausage sambos. The sambos were great, the pool party ended up being a party for 1—neither M or I felt like swimming!! So with this note I’ll head in for the evening as tomorrow we’re off to Williamsburg and Busch Gardens (a large theme park in Virginia).

Song of the Day– Village People, In the Navy