Oh, say can you see...

An absolutely gorgeous day today - sunny, not too warm, not too humid - so perfect for an afternoon trip out. Today's destination of choice: Ft McHenry, on the Baltimore harbour.  As the kids saw the official Star Spangled Banner flag the other day in the American History Museum, I thought it would be fun to see a bit more about the War of 1812 and the writing of the National Anthem. Plus, it's fairly close, and as it's a national park, it was really inexpensive to get into (the kids were free).   And lots of it is outdoors, which on a day like today, was a bonus. 

This is me playing around with my camera, trying to learn all the different functions. This is the panorama shot. I haven't quite got the hang of seamless connections yet, but I'm getting there.

There were cannon everywhere (normally, at this point I'd probably say "Cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them..",  but that's totally the wrong war...)

You can tell what a glorious day it was - there were lots of people out at the park enjoying the sunshine along with us, but it wasn't too crowded.

There were also a number of Civil War re-enactors there, doing re-enacty things. The fort was used as a military prison during the Civil War, so it's not an inappropriate place to have re-enactments. 

Here's the view out across the mouth of the harbour, 

and another shot of the big flag.

A door which goes to who knows where

and a couple of teens being fairly tolerant of being dragged around historical sites. Though Sarah is doing history at GCSE and will probably take it at A-Level as well, so she actually is fairly interested. (Olivia, I'm sure, would point out at this point that she likes history too and also found it interesting.) Sarah in particular noticed, with me, the rather biased narration on the introductory film about the British destroying Washington DC and then marching on to Balitmore with the intention to burn and destroy. Not saying that isn't true, but they did entirely neglect to mention the fact that actually, America declared war on Britian in the War of 1812... (Yeah, I know, there was some justification, and I know it's complicated, but it was still funny to notice the extreme bias. As Sarah said, it's like the way the English present any conflict with France or Germany - we're not without self-awareness, even at age not-quite-16!)

We also enjoyed the dungeon display - we considered leaving Alex here, but it didn't lock properly, so he probably would have got out...

The leg irons didn't lock properly either.

And finally, another flag shot - more photos of flags than I've ever taken before, but between the rather excellent example of a flag, the topicality, and the gorgeous sky, who could resist?