Once in the city of George, Maria, and Cecilius Calvert (Lord Baltimore and family), we were treated to a Sunday afternoon high tea with Taylor, a fellow Greensboro native, who managed to entertain and amuse us by making his fall vacation collide with mine as he drove from Philadelphia to Norfolk. This was a most memorable lunch indeed.
Afterward, we drove around by some places I wanted to see again, including the Rotunda, where a very nice man once tried to befriend me in the men’s room, and the increasingly trendy Fells Point area.
We headed down North Avenue (original Highway 40, the “National Road”) to its intersection with U.S. 1. The neighborhoods were interesting and this was a side of Baltimore I’d never seen. And then the diner of my dreams appeared on the left. It was a wonderful thing, pretty faithfully restored, and was a most fitting coffee and pie stop.
Then it was back to Westminster, because I was not about to miss the season premieres of “The Simpsons” and “King of the Hill”, tour or no, and neither was Risa.
We stopped at Roy Rogers on the way back so I could experience my first Double-R-Bar Burger of the trip; yer host loves this part of the country ‘cuz it’s the only place Roy’s hasn’t been completely bastardized by Hardee’s. In fact, they even tried to change the names and formats here a few years back and business took such a nosedive they had to change back. OK…I’m overly enthusiastic about fast food here. I’ll stop…
Afterward, I got to hang out with cute boys in the computer lab at Western Maryland College. Big bonus here. And I finally witnessed my first Jewish wedding, albeit on video rather than in person.
And the updates on old high school and college pals prepared me somewhat for the fact that I would be back in North Carolina in a day or so.