By nimames
With the cold weather that has decided to settle in Washington, three friends, Marlitt, Steph, Zenia and I decided to go away for a day and visit the city of Baltimore. I was really excited by the prospects of visiting another city close by because that’s why I applied for the exchange program in the first place: seeing as much of the U.S as possible and I certainly wasn’t disappointed by my first visit: Baltimore. 
We woke up at 7 am and braved the cold weather and headed to Union Station. I haven’t been to union station before and I was glad I did. I never though a train station could have shopping centers what with Moroccan stations having a coffee shop or two and couple of restaurants here and there. I was surprised to see an H&M store and a food court !
We got in the train and the landscape was something akin to the Twilight set except that it was covered with snow. After a mere 40 min we arrived at Baltimore welcomed by a chilly weather and snow falling. 
The adventurous, and prepared girls that we were, we had looked up nice places to visit in Baltimore: the Baltimore Harbor 
, the National Aquarium, the Baltimore Observation Deck and the Cheesecake Factory (of course !). We quickly hopped in a bus that took to the National Aquarium in which we spend 2 hours looking at funny-looking fish, dangerous sharks and extremely rare and deadly poisonous albeit tiny frogs! 
The visit ended with a tour of the loud and humid rainforest of Australia where we got to see birds, parrots, snakes, tarantulas and different kinds of trees and plant, our tummies screamed for some good seafood. We asked around for nice seafood restaurant nearby and we ended up in Mo’s Seafood Restaurant. After being welcomed by the nicest waiter I ever had the pleasure of meeting, we ordered quite a lot of food including the notorious Mo’s Crab Cake and a platter of fresh and oh-so-delicious oysters.
After having a delicious meal, we headed to the observation deck of Baltimore. When we entered the building, we met a nice guy at the entrance with whom with played a little guessing game. Each of us being from a different continent (Staph was from Australia, Zenia from Singapore and Marlitt from Germany), I guess it would have been difficult though interesting to see if he’d get our nationalities right. We asked him to guess our nationalities and boy was it difficult. When he tried to guess where I’m from, he thought I was from South America which I get all the time! But then when I told him I was from Africa, he got the right answer from the first try and I must admit that I was surprised. I honestly would have never thought that people would know such a tiny country that Morocco is but it warmed my heart nevertheless.
Upon getting to the 27th floor, we had the most amazing panoramic view of Baltimore. The room was a 360 degrees glass window that allowed us to have a view of all the snow covered surrounding which was truly an amazing sight! 
We took tons of pictures and I even go a souvenir 
. I decided to collect fridge magnets from all the places I may visit in the U.S and hopefully my fridge would be full of magnets from all over the country !
After the observation deck, we had a little time to kill before our train back to DC, we decided to go to the famous cheesecake factory (no Penny there !). We got a lemon and raspberry cheesecake and it was heaven on earth. I can’t express how much food is important for me and although I did mention it in my last post, I think reiterate it would be appropriate. The culinary part of my experience in the U.S is both important and present in my new every daily life and I really hope it will not end anytime soon.
Thank you Baltimore for a wonderful day, to you I say <3 