I was expecting my friends from Canada to arrive later today, John and Theresa. They were driving down from Buffalo, which was expected to take about 8 hours. I decided to go into Annapolis again in the morning using the hotel shuttle. I was dropped off at the harbour front visitor’s information centre. I took a river tour on the Harbour Queen, which took about 40 minutes. It was really great to see Annapolis from the sea. It looked quite different and much larger than when one was ashore. The tour took me post the Naval Academy and along the coast with beautiful views of the town from the sea with the distinctive dome roofs and harbour buildings.
John and Teresa arrived at the hotel and left their bags there without checking in so that they could catch the shuttle into tow to meet us. We were waiting for them at the visitors centre when they arrived. It was wonderful to see them again, the last time was in Cancun last February. After a whole lot of hugs and kissing we took a slow walk to Main Street and found a restaurant for lunch. We sat outside in a narrow side walk with rickety tables but it was intimate and perfect to meet old friends again. Afterwards we just meandered amongst the shops before we caught out shuttle bus back to the hotel.
John and Teresa’s had bought wine from Canada so we went into the Business launch area of the hotel and sat and drank a few glasses as we discussed where we would eat dinner tonight. We all decided we wanted to eat crab seeing as we were in the crab capital of the world so we took a taxi to Mike’s Crab house. It was a very rustic place on the edge for the bay, the tables were covered in plastic washable table cloth. The crabs came in a big plates with a bucket for the shells. We put on our bibs as the waiter showed us how to crack open the crabs and extract as much meat as possible. Then of we went, snap, crack and suck until we had eaten around 6 crabs each. It was a memorable evening and we even ha d privilege of having the same taxi driver on the way back to the hotel. She was charming African American who owned her own taxi which she had for many years, which was obvious by the grinding sound of the rear axle. She was full character and charm.