Monday 10th July 2023

A day with many ups and downs

We said goodby to the Ramada Inn today and Marietta took us fto the Allentown Transit Center to catch the bus which substitutes for Amtrak to Philadelphia. It was a pleasant start to the day.

The bus starts in Scranton and was half full when we got on. But we got seats together and I was entertained writing up my blog of our Sunday. The sky was grey but not really raining.

And 90 minutes later we are on the Schuykill Parkway and Philadelphia boathouses and city centre come into site.

We were scheduled for a three hour layover at 30th St Station but it became nearly 4 hours and after everyone got queued/lined up at gate 5 we suddenly got changed to gate 9 and had a bit of a scramble. But the station has immensely high ceilings and very classic design. Sadly the photos I took inside the station were lost with my phone.

We finally arrived in Baltimore Penn Station about 2.00pm. Our next stage of the journey was to the Metro station on West Preston Street at the State Center. We caught a yellow taxi for this short journey but when we got there the gates to the station were shut and the cabbie just dropped us off and we got out to try to find an open entrance…..but the who line from John Hopkins University to Owings Mills was closed. And I discovered I had dropped my phone in the cab 🥺

Our saviour was an older lady who was walking by and noticed our confusion. She told us there were shuttle buses and those were usually full. But she asked the truck vendors and other people in the square where the bus stopped and crossing over the road several times found the stop and took us across to us to join others waiting for it . The first bus had people standing in the aisles and none of us could get one. One many was checking for the next bus on his phone and kept us air updated on its expected arrival. Luckily the next bus allowed passengers on.

Having lost one phone I had another phone and called my niece to warn her of our delay. We finally arrived at Owings Mills about 4pm and Pam got us to Mike’s house and my sister about 4.30. What a relief to reach our destination.