Part three of traveling to and exploring the wonders (mostly nutritional) of the United States of America

15^th August 2015

• The previous night was a simple night in with large sausage pizza and lots of watching of always sunny in Philadelphia

• As always the days are nice and hot but through enough strategic positioning in the airBnB room I am able to find cool spots and I am using the air con as a sort of cool down the room system and then turning it off once it is bearable.

• Today is wedding day and thankfully the wedding is at 6pm so not only do we have the day to prepare for it but we are also able to get suited and booted while not sweating into a puddle of salty human ooze.

• Through planning for the day everything has actually been very casual and chill, even though the groom has already seen the bride twice accidentally.

• Everyone thing on the day is so organized and done already the groomsmen decided that a dip in the pool would be in order.

• Swimming has been fun even though I was very very worried that my hair would explode into a fuzz fro as it normally does when it gets wet. It was a worry as I had left my straighteners at home

• After swimming it became funnier and funnier to see the Groom slowly get into more of a panic

• At the location the place is nice and its an outside wedding but it still did not stop me feeling super hot, even though I was not even wearing a jacket.

• Looking at my self in a mirror I just look like a sleazy mid to late 80s hedge fund advisor from New York, but not the good kind, the kind that will weasel you out of money.

• So turns out there is a second wedding at the venue but I guess it was located inside

• Groom is getting super nervous, and with good reason as the Bride is already 15 minutes late. Luckily she does finally arrive

• Whoa and almost as how late the Bride was, the wedding ceremony is over. TIME TO DRINK

• And boy people were not wrong about the bar staff not caring about measurements, I ordered a single makers mark and it tasted at least a double, there was no space for the coke to become a mixer so it was basically a whiskey on the rocks. I had three more of these I think.

• The bartender didn’t really know how to make any cocktails so she just started winging it and she made a “fruity rum punch” which was basically lots of rum with pineapple, lemonade orange and a squeeze of lime, many of these were consumed through the night.

• Thankfully I went to a wedding previously and it seems that UK wedding DJs and US wedding DJs will play almost the same set list, so naturally I had a good game-plan on how to dance to a few things.

• I still looked like a drunken idiot dancing to all these songs

• The best cocktail I saw this bartender make was kind of like a spritzer, but instead of cutting it with lemonade she decided to use vodka in stead. Its safe to say this drink was pretty deadly

• I feel sorry for the Groom as his two sisters are super hot (they almost put some of the bridesmaids to test) but because I have been on holiday with them while they were like 12 they have always been sort of the kid sisters to me anyway. I bet he is going to have some trouble with guys later on in life with those two.

• After the bar shut we decided that a midnight swim would be a good idea. Considering the place switches off at 11:30 it was an interesting swim when we were the last people awake, there were no lights on at the pool and everyone was appropriately smashed.

• Returning from the pool we all realise that the bride and groom have shut the door, The problem is we all changed in that room. Thankfully a guy saw this happening and pulled some clothes from their room to the bridesmaids room. Problem was he forgot to get shoes for me, himself and forgot the whole suit for another guy.

• Returning to the hotel became even trickier at 2 when normal cabs would not bother actually turning up to the place so we gambled on an Uber (shoeless) which would arrive in 4 minutes… or so we thought. The Uber guy also got lost (google maps doesnt really have the driveway going up to our location) so it became this comical scene of seeing the car on the app constantly drive up and down this small side road. To make things worse I was not able to send calls or texts

• Finally the Uber guy called and I told him what he had been doing wrong (for the past 25 minutes) and he realised he was on the wrong road, he took 2 minutes to get to us from then. I have to commend Bryan the uber guy for sticking with us for half an hour, his commitment to not give up on this measly 9.99 fare ride is something we should all use as inspiration to help our fellow drunken man at 2:45am.

16^th August 2015

• So I have a new hangover cure which I need t implement everytime I drink, but I feel it may be hard to do so. It involves always going for a swim after drinking as I have no clue how I am feeling so refreshed this morning.

• So the messup with the suits and stuff meant we were faffing about for a good two hours trying to return the suits (a waistcoat became missing) which meant we were already late to go to the Orioles game

• The major plan for today would be to see the Baltimore Orioles play the Oakland A’s and we all decided on the cheap seats because why spend 50 dollars being in probably not the funnest of seats anyway.

• Camden Yards is a super pretty place with a cool party deck and seems like a built in warehouse section.

• Baseball Dogs are super tasty, for the 5 dollars I think they are worth it but we will have to see how they fare against a New York dog.

• The alcohol price is not that bad at this game for 8.75 dollars for a tall glass of Angry Orchard cider. It tastes like your average cider though, a little smoother than most British ones though.

• Boy did we decide to pick the right day to watch a baseball game for the first time. The Orioles crushed the A’s 18-2 with so many hits. It became a thing that my favourite Oriole is Schoop because he has the best name out of them all. The best name on the day was Coco Crisp. I really wish that is his real birth name.

• After the game we went for a walk around, got to the gift shop and I had to get a Schoop t shirt.

• The dinner tonight would be the Baltimorean traditional blue crab (I was being a dummy expecting them to be blue after cooking)

• I have to say that for all the fuss about hammers and stuff, crab is really easy to open and the back of the knife worked a treat. The problem came from all the mess inside because blegh it looks all horrendous and weird. I like the meat but I don’t think I will bother with that messy effort again for the end result.

The next plan of action is to take a nice long bus to New York City where I will go to my next AirBnB place, I hope that he is just as cool as this guy (I am going to put in a little plug here in case you guys want to go to Baltimore: Nick with the place titled “La maison bleu, half-mile from JHU”). So hopefully I will have some fun stories about the journey and the first couple of days in NY.

Below you can see the crab and a picture of my sweet new shirt.