Weekend and Labour day traveling - Baltimore, Mormon Temple, North beach and Holocaust Museum

I took advantage of this weekend and additional free day - Labor day to do some traveling around DC and in the city. We were talking about doing some small road trip with my friend Katka, who is interning with me at the Czech Embassy, before and this Saturday we made it real.

Baltimore is surprisingly neat city hour far away from Washington. The downtown is located to Inner Harbor which makes nice contrast of modern and tall skyscrapers and water. I think that every city with some river or ocean around just has to look neat in some way and Baltimore just proved my theory. Further from downtown there is an older part of the city with many historical sites. In this area there was written of modern America, so there is plenty of interesting stuff. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to explore all those places so we just basically drove through this neighbourhood. We were supposed to meet up with friend of Katka and explore some night life of Baltimore, but unfortunately she went to some party even before and wasn't able to either come to Baltimore. So, we went back to DC...

Next day we planned to go to Sand Point State Park on some beach. Before we left DC we stopped in the Mormon Temple in the suburb of DC. When we saw it last night my friend thought that it was some Disney land. It really looks like from different world, especially during the night. Huge white stone temple without any windows... Look at the pics below, it's really very weird architecture fitting to this weird church. I was saying to Katka, don't go to Visitor center - you'll get at least hour lesson about their church and Jesus. But she wanted to talk to them and have some fun - and we had, but for me little long. I was looking forward to the beach. After a long while we finally hit the road.

Not just we had the idea to go to the beach this day. We got stucked in the traffic jam, because many people wanted to take advantage of prolonged weekend. When we finally got close to the park, there was a sign Parking full, so we even couldn't get into the park. Never mind, we decided to head to some other close beach. We decided for one hour far away North beach. Now I know that it wasn't very good choice, because when you wanted to get on the tiny beach with dirty sea you had to pay $7. We were there just for a while and we really didn't wanna pay for what we saw. We continued walking on the sea shore and got on some even dirtier (but unpaid ;)) beach with similar dirty water. OK, maybe it was my last time by the ocean this year so I went to the warm and stinky water. Not so good, but at least it was OCEAN!!!

Today, on Monday it was a labor day so I didn't have to go to work. So, I could visit another Washington's museum - this time Holocaust museum. I've heard it's very good museum. And it was... great, I spent there 6 hours today. The history of holocaust and the raise of Nazism were explained in very good and live way... I've been to Auschwitz already, which was very natural adventure. This museum helped me understand all the conditions and the results of this monstrous time of our history. When you have opportunity and you'll be DC, you should definitely visit this museum! But come early morning, many people wanna do the same as you ;)

Baltimore, Mormons' Temple and Holocaust Museum