Sunday 28 August – take me to the ball park

So despite being shattered and going to bed way too early last night we actually managed to stay in bed until almost 7am! Today was all about getting things sorted out and watching the baseball, so after quite a leisurely start we set off in search of the subway to buy a smart rail card (their version of an Oyster card) unfortunately 3 out of the 4 ticket machines were broken, fortunately there was someone standing by them who helped us buy the cards so it was a completely painless experience.
We went down the the Navy Yard which is where the baseball stadium is and went for a walk round the area. I think it is still in the process of being regenerated but parts of it are really nice, there are a couple of old buildings still in place that look very similar to their English counterparts such as the water treatment plant which is just like the one at Feltham. We walked along the waterfront and back down to the stadium then decided to grab a bite of lunch before we entered the stadium.
The pitch looked a lot smaller than we expected, but that didn’t make it any easer to hit a home run! We did a whole circuit of the ballpark then found our seats which were in a great location, just behind home plate. The ball game started at 1.30 but most people didn’t arrive until the 2nd or 3rd innings – about an hour in. Unfortunately Washington didn’t play any better today than they did yesterday and they lost again, which meant that the ‘fans’ all started leaving at the bottom of the 7th followed by a mass exodus at the bottom of the 8th. I thought it was great fun and we stayed right until the end. As we weren’t in any hurry to get back we watched the kids ‘run the bases’ which is something they do after the Sunday matches, kids can run from 1st base to the home plate. It is obviously very popular as the queue was massive.
We decided to walk back to the waterfront and have something to eat, we went to a modern Mexican which was nice and after finishing dinner we set off back to the apartment arriving back just after 7pm where we just relaxed for the rest of the evening, a great first day in Washington.