Baseball Trip – The Rest of the Pictures

Well after a couple of weeks at home and ahead of Jenna’s last trip post about Boston, I’ve finally finished processing the rest of our trip pictures. Check ‘em out!

Baseball Trip – Philadelphia

After the Orioles game in Baltimore, we hopped on a train and traveled to Philadelphia.  I had never been on a train and Matt hadn’t been on one since he was really little, so this was basically a new experience for both of us.  Train travel is SO simple.  There’s no crazy security screening, no removal of shoes, no naked x-ray machines, etc.  You just get your ticket & ID checked and hop on the train.  The seats are bigger and you have at least twice as much leg room as you do on an airplane.  Definitely a much more pleasant way to travel.  Too bad we don’t have passenger trains in Texas.

We arrived in Philly a little late.  It was close 9:00 pm, so we caught a taxi from the train station to our hotel and then ran across the street to grab some supper at a Chili’s.  My worst fear came true when we walked out of the train station…it was cooling off outside…and QUICKLY.  I had not packed clothes for cool weather.  I had 1 long sleeved shirt to keep me warm on the plane/train and p.j. pants…definitely not things that would keep me warm in the New England “summer”.

We started off our first full day in Philly with breakfast at…Dunkin’ Donuts.  I swear…these things were on every freaking corner up there.  Every single city we visited seemed to have them about as close together as we have Starbucks.  It was weird.  After breakfast we hopped on the subway and rode over to the tourist spots…Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and the U.S. Mint.  There were TONS of tour groups and school groups at the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall…I guess the schools in the Northeast aren’t out for summer yet?  Too bad for them.   The U.S. Mint was pretty cool too…unfortunately there were no photos allowed, but it was neat to see how our coins are made and all of the machinery that’s used.

Independence Hall…it was so cool to think about all the things that took place in this building.

the liberty bell…the little museum we walked through before seeing the bell had tons of interesting facts about the bell that neither of us knew.  Apparently it used to tour the country and it served as a symbol to ending slavery and ending Apartheid in South Africa.  So interesting…

Ok…now for the Phillies game.  We took the Subway out to Citizens Bank Park for the Phillies game against the San Diego Padres.  It was a night game, so I packed my sweatpants so I wouldn’t freeze during the entire game.  I was a little non-impressed when we arrived outside the ballpark in Philly…it’s not much to look at from the outside, but the inside was pretty awesome.  And…they definitely had the best food out of all 5 ballparks we visited.  Matt had a cheesesteak which was pretty good and I had definitely had the best dinner I could ever ask for…French Fries!  But they weren’t just any french fries…they were called CRABFRIES and they were HEAVENLY!  I’m pretty sure they were just crinkle cut fries with crab seasoning on them, but holy moly…they were amazing.

outside the park…not overly impressive

yes…that’s an entire cup of french fries…and it was my dinner.  I love vacation!

Citizens Bank Park…view from the outfield

view from our seats

the hot dog cannon

the Liberty Bell in the outfield

us after the Phillies game

Great game, great park, great food, and the home team won!  We loved our time at Citizens Bank Park…but we were not impressed with Philadelphia.  If you have family there or are from there, I’m sorry, but Philly is gross and dirty and the bums are EVERYWHERE.  Some of the old historical buildings were impressive, but that’s about it…we were glad to leave and get on with our trip.  Next stop…New York City!

Baseball Trip – Baltimore

We left Houston last Saturday and flew to Baltimore, Maryland to watch the Baltimore Orioles play the Boston Red Sox at Camden Yards.  Our flight was uneventful (always a good thing) and we arrived at the fabulous Hilton hotel right across from the ballpark.  After getting checked in and relaxing in the room for a little while, we walked down to the Baltimore harbor and had a delicious dinner looking out over the harbor.  After dinner, we walked around the harbor, mostly people watching.  Apparently it was high school graduation night and the harbor was packed with unruly kids.  It was quite humorous in a way and also inspired us to head back to the hotel to get away from the crazies.

On our way back to the hotel we stopped by the ballpark to get some night pictures of the entrance all lit up since the game we were going to was the next afternoon.  We got some great shots and then headed in to the hotel for the night.  We slept late the next morning, walked to a nearby donut shop for breakfast, and then went back to the hotel to check out of our room.  We checked our bags with the bellhop since we wouldn’t be leaving Baltimore until after the baseball game and then we wandered across the street for the game.

the Sports Legend Museum at the entrance to Camden Yards

the entrance to Camden Yards

Oriole Park at Camden Yards is a really cool ballpark.  It is a very simple & classic park, but yet has a very new and modern feel to it.  The game was great.  The Red Sox were in town for the weekend series and there were a ton of Boston fans there for the game.  This was actually the very first game Matt and I had ever seen in the rain.  Since we have an indoor stadium here in Houston, rain is never something we have to worry about with baseball games.  They continued to play in the rain, and when it got bad enough, we just pulled out our ponchos and continued to enjoy some baseball!  Luckily, we were able to see the home team pull out a win!

the view from our seats

the outfield

us after the game!

Our Dream Vacation!

We’ve been talking for a few years now about seeing games at all of the major league baseball parks.  In order to really get a jump start on crossing parks off our list, we thought the best place to start was the northeastern United States because there’s lots of parks and the cities are all within just a few hours of each other.  Our original plan was just to see a Yankees game and Mets game in New York and then head to Boston for a game at Fenway, but when we realized that there were home games in Baltimore and Philadelphia that same week, we added two more stops to the trip and off we went!

We flew to Baltimore last Saturday and traveled by train between each of the cities before flying home from Boston today.  We splurged on great seats at the parks and some nice hotels in a couple of the cities and really had a fantastic week away.  It was a great way to relax after finishing a hectic school year and a very busy several months of Matt working 60+ hours per week.

Of course while we were in each of these cities, we did more than just baseball.  There’s so much history and so much to see in all of these places, that our days were full of sightseeing and our nights full of baseball games…what could be better?

Pictures from each city and ballpark coming soon (we took over 1,000 pictures)!!

Coming Together!

Our baseball trip is really starting to come together now!  Our train tickets arrived at Matt’s office the other day and we finished ordering all of our tickets for the baseball games this weekend.  We knew tickets at Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium would be the most expensive of the 5 stadiums we were visiting…but HOLY.COW.  It was unbelievable to see the markup on the tickets.  The game we are seeing in Boston is a game against the Phillies, so it was a “Black-out” series and when tickets went on sale Saturday morning all they had left was standing room only. I don’t know what prompted Matt to check Boston tickets Saturday morning, but he did…and we both ended up “sitting” in the “Boston Red Sox Virtual Waiting Room” for tickets to the game we wanted and then we ended not even buying anything because they only had single seats left.  We ended up getting AMAZING seats off of StubHub…but paying more than I’ll ever admit for them…front row seats along the first base line…technically field level seats, but there are like 5 rows in front of us.  So…really, I guess they are more like row 6…but whatever…it’s row 1 of our section.  Make sense?  Good.

awesome, huh?

Our tickets at Yankee Stadium are on the second level along the 3rd base line and while they were expensive…they weren’t anywhere close to what we had to pay at Fenway.  Yankee’s tickets aren’t on sale through their website yet, so we bought these straight through StubHub and didn’t even wait around to see what we might be able to get from MLB.com.  They are playing the Astros when we are there, so we know it won’t be a “Black-out series”…haha…but they sell out their games no matter who they are playing, so we went ahead and bought them.

pretty dang sweet, huh?

Now that we have all of our game tickets and transportation lined up…we just need hotels to stay in!  We will be booking those in the next few weeks!  Hurry up, June!

Baseball Extravaganza

As we mentioned several months ago, Matt and I are planning to take a baseball lover’s trip of a lifetime this summer.  We have finally started making travel arrangements for our trip and we are so excited.  We just wish it wasn’t still so far away!  We’ve booked our plane tickets to get us to our first city and baseball stadium and then home from our last stop on the trip.  We are both trying REALLY, REALLY hard to pack in carry-on sized suitcases so we don’t have to deal with checking bags.  It’s just so annoying and frustrating and even worse now that you have to pay to checked luggage.  Matt will totally be able to pack and carry his suitcase on the plane…me on the other hand….that remains to be seen.  A week is a long time and will require lots of clothes .

We’ve also booked our train tickets.  We will be taking the Amtrak train between Baltimore, Philly, New York and Boston.  We are both really excited about this.  I’ve never been on a train before, so I’m looking forward to it.  This is the other reason we are both trying to pack in carry-on sized luggage…you can’t check luggage on the trains we are taking and it would be a huge pain to deal with a big gigantic suitcase on a train and in a train station.

Last night we were able to book the first of our game tickets.  The Baltimore Orioles already have their tickets on sale, so we found so pretty good seats at Camden Yards and bought our tickets for the game.  We looked at tickets for our other games on StubHub…but because they are because sold by season ticket holders, they cost more than if were to buy them from the teams we are going to wait until the other teams put their tickets on sale before we buy them.  If we need to buy them through StubHub to get good seats, we will.

We’ve got hotels for each city picked out, but will book those in the next several weeks.  We are also deciding on other things to do in each of the cities we will be visiting other than the baseball games.  We will be in New York for almost 4 days and since Matt’s never been there…we have lot’s to do!  We also plan on trying one of Bobby Flay’s restaurants while we are in New York.

We are getting so excited about our trip…I wish it was closer to June than it is.

2 Relaxing Weekends

Matt and I have had two wonderfully relaxing weekends the last couple of weeks.  Last weekend, after a few crazy weeks, we both took Friday off from work and drove out there early Friday morning so we would have an extra day to enjoy the serenity.  We have spent both weekends in the Hill country with my family at the ranch and it was so nice to get away for a few days and just relax.  We didn’t do a whole lot…the guys hunted, the ladies sat with them in the deer stands, we rode 4wheelers, ate LOTS of tasty food, and enjoyed some wonderful weather.  Us gals ventured into Fredericksburg to do some shopping one morning, but other than that, we steered clear of civilization for the weekend.   The guys didn’t come home with much meat…only 1 deer and 1 hog were shot, but it was great to get out there before things get busy with the holidays.  We won’t be going back until the day after Christmas, which we are so excited about!

Dream Vacation 2010

Fall has just barely begun and Matt and I are already well on our way to planning our summer vacation.  We have always talked about wanting to visit all of the Major League Baseball Stadiums for a game.  With that in mind, for a few years now, we have been trying to plan a trip to the East Coast to see games in New  York and Boston.  The catch was finding a weekend where all three teams had home games.  We check the schedules every year and when the 2010 schedule was released a few weeks ago, our dreams came true!  We started planning a weekend trip to NYC to see both the Yankees and the Mets play and then take the train to Boston to see the Red Sox play.  We decided to go for it and just for grins, I decided to see if any of the other East Coast teams had games around that same weekend.  It turns out that we will be able to see the Orioles play in Baltimore, the Phillies play in Philadelphia, the Yankees & Mets play in NYC, and finally the Red Sox play in Boston.  We will be gone for 8 days, spending 3 days in NYC to include a few of the hot tourist spots while we’re there. AND…the Yankess game we are planning to see…is the series against our home team, the Astros!  How cool to see the Astros play in Yankee stadium.

After waiting for so long, the stars have finally aligned!  We are so excited about our vacation next summer!  After this trip it will bring our total of MLB parks to 7…not too bad for only being about 2.5 years into our quest.  My brother and one of my cousins will also be joining us on our dream vacation since they too share our love for baseball.

The Rest of Our DC Pictures

Jen posted some of the pictures from our trip, but the rest of our pictures are available here or below. Enjoy!

Homeward Bound!

Time to head home!

Leaving Washington D.C – Thursday morning

Oh, so happy to see that sign Friday afternoon!

Finally home!

After a week of eating strange food in D.C., we did the most important thing…unpacked the car and then drove to our neighborhood Mexican food restaurant to satisfy our cravings!  We love to travel…but man oh man, we love home!