Annapolis, Maryland

A long day's drive......

We headed from Wilmington towards Washington, DC with no real end plan for the day. Our plans were not to arrive in the nation's capital until the day after but we had no particular plans on where we would end up this afternoon. We decided on Annapolis, Maryland and arrived late afternoon, just in time to quickly locate the information visitor centre and see what we could do the next morning before heading to Washington.

Eventually we decided to again pay to take a driving tour of the town on a small bus as we wanted to get a good overview of the city and how it was laid out, as well as some information about the history of the city and what we were looking at! Annapolis is a quaint historical town with a cute look about it. The town sits on the water and has a few small 'neighbourhoods' within the city limits. It sits on Chesapeake Bay and is only 47 kilometres from Washington DC.

Main street of Annapolis, looking down to the harbour.
Lined with cobblestones and old style architecture buildings.

The war memorial overlooking Annapolis and the Naval Academy.

One of the main 'attractions' in town is the US Naval Academy. It has about 4,500 midshipmen who attend the academy at any one time. One of the pieces of information we learned from our tour driver is that each student is required to play at least one sport every year they attend the academy. Also, just last year the daughter of the first female midshipmen to graduate the academy graduated, making them the first mother-daughter pair to be alumni (there are obviously plenty of father-son pairs!!) The Naval Academy has also produced 52 astronauts from their graduate pool and one President of the United States. The midshipmen are also given 20 minutes to eat their lunch - all at once - in the HUGE dining hall in the Yard. The Yard (campus) is really huge and takes up a lot of area very close to the harbour - I didn't realise it would be so close to the middle of the town :-)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Naval_Academy_sign.jpg
 

We left Annapolis after a quick lunch and headed towards Washington, DC. More to come.......

Keep smiling,
Candice :-)