Baltimore Wedding day one

When we received an invite by E-Mail and the internet to the wedding of our niece Olivia Rose Glover, the daughter of my wife’s sister. She wanted to marry a Washington D.C. policeman who wants to be a lawyer named James Arthur White, he prefers just Jimmy White. The wedding was to be on the 26th of January 2013 in the Hotel Monaco, which is in Baltimore Maryland. The story of how Olivia met Jimmy as I heard and as I remember was that he was in a police car that collided with another car at a Washington D.C. intersection, putting Jimmy in serious condition in the hospital where Olivia worked as a physical therapist. Olivia helped Jimmy regain his health, they must have bonded right then and there, but after Jimmy got better they went their separate ways. Olivia as it would happen had to go to a police station for some paper work some months later and they met again, this time falling in love, which is why we ended up going to Baltimore in January. The first thing we did was to book a Hilton Hotel as close to the Hotel Monaco as we could using our Hilton Hhonors Points we booked two rooms, one for ours two sons and one for us, at the Home2 by Hilton for that weekend. Then we got four tickets on a Greyhound bus from the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan to the Greyhound Bus Terminal in Baltimore Maryland, we choose the bus because it was cheaper and my wife Adele’s sister was going to take the same bus with her husband John and her friend Wendy. We were to meet them at the Port Authority before the bus left at 12:01PM. The Wedding was on a Saturday, so we traveled on Friday, each of us packed two bags one with our formal clothes and one for our regular clothes, which we pack into the trunk of our car and drove to Ronkonkoma Long Island Railroad station. We wanted to leave from Ronkonkoma so we didn’t have to change trains. Friday morning we left our house at about 8AM with my son Kenneth driving to Ronkonkoma railroad station, where we parked in a parking garage, haling our bag across the street to the railroad station, where we bought our tickets to Penn Station. First the railroad announcement said that our train was on time, but after a while there came another announcement that there was trouble on the tracks as one of the rails broke and they had to cancel all east bound trains. I thought at once if they are canceling east bound trains, they won’t have trains to go west bound either and sure enough a short time later they announced that all trains were canceled between Ronkonkoma and Farmingdale. They then announced that they would have buses available between Ronkonkoma and Farmingdale, but they were not sure when, maybe in a half hour or so. I turned to my son Kenny and said we could drive to Hicksville before the bus could get to Ronkonkoma. So we went back across the street, piling back into the car and drove to Hicksville, where we at first tried parking in a parking garage only to find out that you needed a permit from Oyster Bay town to park there, so as Adele, Mike and I went to the Hicksville railroad station while my youngest son Kenny parked the car across the street in a large parking lot for eight dollars for the weekend. We met back with him at the railroad station where we caught at train that would get us into Penn Station at about 11:30AM giving us about a half hour to catch the bus. We stood on a cold Hicksville railroad station platform waiting the train to come and when it did we were lucky to find seats, but the Long Island Railroad was built for commuters to/from the city not people with luggage, so we crammed into the seats with our luggage. When the train got to Penn Station we quickly went to the 8th Ave exit and walked from 34th street to the Port Authority on about 40th Street, along the way Adele start a conversation with what appeared to be a homeless person much to the condensation of my oldest son Mike. When we got to the Port Authority Bus Terminal we found where we could find our bus, we found we had time to eat some lunch. While we were eating in came Adele’s sister Dorothy with her husband John and her friend Wendy. Bob Newey our friend from the city was holding our place at the gate for the bus, also going on the bus with us was Bob Newey, Dorothy Glover, John Glover, Wendy (don’t know her last name), Adele Boyle, Mike Boyle, Kenny Boyle and myself, eight of us going to the wedding. The bus ride was ok accept that it took a little longer because of a snow storm that slowed traffic into Baltimore. When we arrived at the Baltimore Greyhound bus terminal, it was still snowing, with no taxies to be seen anywhere. When a taxi did come it was delivering people to the bus terminal, but not picking anyone up. Finally a cab came, Bob, Dorothy, Wendy and John got in, then a short time later another cab came, Adele, Mike, Kenny and I got in. We told the driver what Hotel we wanted to go to, he said it would be $30, which I figured was way too much, but cabs seem to be rare. He drove around Baltimore for a while then finally we got the Home2 Hotel. They gave us two rooms across from one another, nice rooms with a kitchen sink, full refrigerator and Microwave and a nice view of the city out the window. We asked the clerks where the Monaco Hotel was, but they said they never heard of it, I may have mispronounced it, I don’t know, I am forever getting Morocco mixed up with Monaco. There was a reception at the Hotel Monaco at 7PM so we refreshed in our rooms and started out walking down the street for we did find someone who knew what direction to walk, asking a few more people along the way we got to the Hotel Monaco where we were told that the reception was on the second floor, the elevators need a room key to operate so we took a beautiful marble stairs to the reception area where we met the White family. We met Jimmy’s Parents Bradley and Harriet White as well as his other relatives, who we talked to while feeding our faces, Adele had some seizure water to drink, my sons beer and I had a couple of classes of wine. After a while we walked back to our hotel on ice covered sidewalks, I know in New York City they have an ordinance about property owners clearing the snow from the sidewalks, but I guess Baltimore had no such ordinance for the sidewalks remained bad all weekend. I remember the buildings around the street where we had to turn for our hotel and we got there safely.

The Hotel Monaco in Baltimore Maryland

First floor hallway of the Hotel Monaco