Home Sweet Home!

We made it home after a 7 hour drive and of course hitting traffic through Chicago. It was pretty painless, except for the speeding ticket Andrew received just 5 minutes after leaving the hotel in Cleveland! I had a feeling one of us would get one sometime on the trip with all the driving, but we had gotten so close. J
 
We didn't go straight home though. We had to stop to see our new nephew, James Walter! It was a great way to end our trip!

He's so cute!! He slept most of the time we were there, but we did get a look at his adorable blue eyes!

We got souvenir cups from each stadium, except Citi Field (because they didn't have them), but we did get a free bobble head instead!

After attending games at 9 different stadiums, we discussed some of our favorite things. Our favorite stadium is a tie between Fenway Park for its nostalgia and Citi Field for its variety and quality of food and drink. There was also a tie between the best hot dogs—Fenway and Citi Field again. The biggest rip-off was Yankee Stadium. Their hot dogs were half the size of all the others, but more expensive, and their beers were $11 each! The best deals on food and drink were at Progressive Field. After they loaded the baseball helmet with ice cream, they instantly won that award! But the same stadium gets the worst hot dog award!

It was a whirlwind trip, but definitely worth it! We had a great time (and stayed married J)! Maybe next year, we’ll do a west coast road trip--stay tuned!

The Last Game...Dollar Dogs and Fireworks

I can’t believe that the Cleveland Indians game was our last game! By that point, I think I was “baseballed out.” We had been to 9 games in 14 days! Andrew and I had a lot of fun watching all these games, and I have learned a lot about the game—probably more than I ever needed to know!

Anyway, we bought tickets at the box office asking for the cheapest available. We paid $18 for both tickets—cheapest game of them all! Progressive Field is very similar to all the newer ones we’ve been to. We took our usual lap around the concourse to scope out our food options, then we saw it—deep-fried heaven!! It was a vendor that only sold fried foods—funnel cakes, funnel fries, chicken fingers, fried twinkies, fried cookie dough, and…chicken and waffle sandwiches! Neither Andrew nor I had ever had one, so why not?

It was delicious dipped in syrup. Who ever thought of this combination??

It was also dollar dog day, but we decided to wait a bit to have one of those. Andrew only had 2 this time! I voted them the worst ballpark dogs we had, but I still ate it, so we could add it to the count! Not worth the calories. I’m pretty sure I’ve put on a few pounds just from all the hot dogs!!

Our seats were in the very last section on the end of the row—you can’t get much further from the field! It must have been high school student day or something because there were more high school students than I have seen in one place in a long time. Now, many of you know how much I love adolescents, so it was really fun being surrounded by them!! Now I understand why U.S. Cellular has a bullpen bar—for all those adults that need to get away from annoying youngsters!! Seriously, I have not seen so many boys spit in one place!! I couldn’t handle it—Andrew and I moved seats 3 times, but that didn't work; they were everywhere!

What made up for the many young ones was the baseball game. Usually, Andrew and I would cheer for the home team, but this game was different. We were cheering for the Kansas City Royals because the Indians were 1.5 games ahead of the White Sox. Apparently, we chose the right team to cheer for. The Royals had a great game! We saw another grand slam and 3 other homeruns!! After the grand slam (the 2^nd homerun by the same player), the pitcher proceeded to throw his next pitch right at the batter’s head. That got him ejected and cleared the benches—no blows were thrown though!

We left our seats one last time to sit in the corner of the upper deck. From here, we could see and hear John Adams a.k.a. The Drummer. He has been featured on ESPN and has his own Wikipedia page, which is where I am getting all of this information. He first brought his bass drum (which he purchased a ticket for) to a game in 1973 where the Indians won. Since then, he sits in the same seat, at the top of the bleachers in center field. He has only missed 34 games since 1973--that is less than 1 a year!! The Indians now pay for his seats and have had a bobble head day for him!! On April 27, 2011, he played his drum for the 3,000^th game.

Since it was our last game, I thought it was necessary to get ice cream in a baseball helmet. They loaded in the ice cream--best deal ever!

Taken from our final seats!

I must say though, we saw the best fan wave at this game. it made it around the stadium 4 times!! I guess the fans needed something to do while their team was losing 12-0!

We were actually really lucky to be at the game this weekend. It was the annual Rock and Blast where they put on a fireworks show set to music. It is put on by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Friday night was classic rock night--perfect for Andrew! The fireworks lasted about 30 minutes and were pretty amazing.

The best picture we could get with our camera at night J

Cleveland Rocks!

We made it to Cleveland around 2 and went straight downtown to find parking. We quickly realized that there isn’t a lot to do in Cleveland! Instead of walking aimlessly around the city, we decided to spend some time at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I had been there with my family many years ago, so I didn’t remember much.

The main exhibit takes you through the history of rock, which includes timelines and artifacts from many artists and bands. We thought the coolest artifacts were the artists’ notebooks where they wrote their music. The best was Madonna’s because there was a Post-it in hers to call Mike Myers to discuss the SNL script!

Unfortunately, we couldn’t take pictures, although of course there were those people that can’t follow directions. The teacher in me wanted to confront them, but I decided to avoid confrontation. Instead, I just gave them my best teacher look!

We stayed until closing at 5:30 and then walked around a bit before heading to the stadium.

Heading West

On our way out of D.C. this morning, we stopped at the Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport since we didn't see enough airplanes the day before! J

This museum is a giant hangar, so you can only imagine how excited I was! No, it was okay, and we saw some cool airplanes including the Concorde and the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer.

 Yes, those are all airplanes (and that's only one half of the hangar) and no, we did not stop to read about each one!!

The Enola Gay, which dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima

We also saw the Enterprise, the space shuttle not the starship! This one never went into space, but was used for training purposes.

 

The next 7 hours were spent in the car driving through Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania to Ohio. We decided to stop in Columbus to visit with family. We had dinner with my aunt, uncle, and cousins that night--we hadn’t seen them since our wedding! The next morning, we visited my grandma on our way out of town. it was great catching up with everyone.

Is this the right stadium?

We hopped on the metro to the stadium at about 6. It was easy to find the metro—we just followed a mass of people leaving the Capitol Building after work. We got on the train to the Stadium-Armory stop. When we go off, there was a giant, yellow sign that said “Stadium this way”. We got outside and started walking, but didn’t see any fans and saw a sign for RFK Stadium (where the Nationals used to play), which showed a picture of a soccer team. We found a map that showed where we were, and then across the city, saw a building labeled Nationals Park. We had gone to the wrong stadium!!! The funniest thing was that on the train, I had asked Andrew if we were going to the right stadium, not because I had doubts, but just because I wanted to know. He said he was about 95% sure. In hindsight, we should have realized it was the wrong stop and train since there was no one wearing any sports attire!

We got back on the train and made it to the correct stop—we saw lots of people wearing Nationals apparel!

We hadn’t bought tickets beforehand because they don’t usually sell out, so we bought them at the ticket window for $10 each—the cheapest so far. Instead of walking around the stadium, like we have done at other stadiums to see what kinds of food they had, we bought hot dogs and our souvenir soda right away. Hot dogs were $1 each, but only at a certain vendor!!

I took this picture to show just how many Nationals fans make it to the games. There were more fans at the Boston Red Sox game at midnight than at this game at 8:30!!

Instead of racing Connie’s Pizza slices, like U.S. Cellular does, they race presidents. Thomas Jefferson won this race!!

Andrew eating hot dog number 3!! We got 4 hot dogs for less than the price of one at Yankee Stadium!

It actually turned out to be a good game. A lot of people left in the 7^th and 8^th innings, but in the bottom of the 9^th, the Nationals scored 3 runs. Unfortunately, they lost 7-5.

Our Nation's Capital

The drive to Washington, D.C. was pretty painless. Andrew made sure we stopped in Delaware to stretch our legs and buy something at the service center since it was the one state in the Northeast he hadn’t yet visited. 

Imagine being able to be magically whisked away to...Delaware!
"Hi, I’m in Delaware.”

We got to the hotel in Alexandria, hopped in the hotel van to Pentagon City (a shopping center), and took the metro to the city. We ate lunch in the food court of the Ronald Reagan Building and then set out to explore the Mall.

We started at the Washington Monument thinking maybe we could go to the top. We found out tickets were free, but they were sold out for the day. The sign in the ticket window said to arrive at least 2 hours before opening time (8:30 am) to ensure tickets!! Pictures in front of the monument were enough for us!

Andrew's artistic picture

Andrew trying to be a super hero :)

Our walk continued to the Lincoln Memorial. On the way, we were able to see the World War II Memorial that was built in 2004.

There are structures all around the outside representing the U.S. states/territories

Each star represents 100 Americans who lost their lives.

I had forgotten how enormous the statue of Lincoln is.

We decided to walk along the outside of the Mall and stop in some of the Smithsonian museums since they are free.

We stopped in the Museum of American History where they had a special exhibit on the First Ladies, which included clothing and accessories! It was interesting for me, but a bit boring for Andew.

They showcased inauguration dresses and accessories. My favorites were Mamie Eisenhower, Jackie Kennedy, Nancy Reagan, and Michelle Obama.

Mamie's (left) and Jackie's (right) dresses

We walked to the Museum of Natural History to see some dinosaurs.

Andrew's favorite dinosaur, the triceratops

To make up for us seeing dresses, we walked across the mall to the Air and Space Museum.

Andrew hanging out with his buddies, Wilbur and Orville Wright.

This one's for my mom. We walked through a sculpture garden where they had duplicate of some of the metro station signs from Paris. My mom and I went looking for these when we were in Paris.

Our last stop was the Capitol Building, which was closed by the time we got there. It was okay because we were exhausted by this time anyway.

How many more games?!

Most of today was spent in the car driving through Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey on our way to Philadelphia. We drove straight to the game and found parking in the stadium lot to the be the cheapest so far; only $15!!

Citizens Bank Ballpark is pretty new, so it was very similar to Citi Park in New York and PNC Park in Pittsburgh. Not as many food choices, but still a good variety.

We had to buy our tickets on Stub Hub because the Phillies sell out all their games. Usually, even when a game is sold out, there are a lot of empty seats, but we were surprised to see most seats filled.

Whenever a player hits a homerun, the “Liberty Bell” lights up and dings.

Tonight’s game was quick--it was shorter than last night’s rain delay in Boston! It was a pretty exciting game for the Phillies though. We saw 5 homeruns, 4 by the Phillies and 1 by the Giants (scored by Aaron Rowand who used to play for the White Sox). One of those homeruns, hit by Chase Utley, was especially exciting. It was an inside the park homerun, which is a rare thing to see!!

We had to get a Philly cheesesteak sandwich!