Otakon weekend in Baltimore
After a nice long exhaustive weekend, thousands of people, a 10-hour drive, and costumes to boot, I've uploaded my photos and report of Otakon 2010. Check it out.
The weekend started with me going to Toronto first, picking up my girlfriend and two others for the trip. From the get-go, my car was packed. Just over two hours, we meet the border, and answer to the guard why we're headed to the U.S. Standard truthful answers were given, even though we had two prop swords and a giant prop Yoko gun yikes.
Our drive down was pretty good, with minimal mis-directions. My navigator deserves the credit for that, I simply drove. We left around 10am, and arrived at our hotel at about 9pm. Checked in quickly, and parked across the street for the remainder of the weekend, $10 per day.
After we carried all our stuff to our two decent hotel rooms (no the hotel didn't have a pool), we headed down to the Baltimore convention center which is about a 15 minute walk down. The main street was really shady at night with plenty of "gangs", so we avoided it when possible. We picked up our badges with relative ease, getting to choose the design of our badge, which is a nice touch. During that time, we got a small feel of the large convention building, bigger then I expected, and somewhat of a maze with multiple floors.
All three days I brought my camera to take photos and some videos, and wore Houndoom, Kamina, and Saiga respectively. The whole weekend seems more of a blur so I'm not going to detail what happened each day. All three days had great weather, either clear skies or a bit cloudy, not very humid either.
I met up with plenty of friends at the con which was very nice, and made some new ones as well. I did a couple photoshoots with different people, wish I could have done more though! The facility itself, inside and out, was really a great-looking piece of architecture and design, which makes it a very ideal location for shoots.
Food-wise, it was much easier to find something to eat along the harbor rather then up and down the streets, other then subway. It sufficed enough to get us through the weekend, but I wish there could have been a Kelsey's at least. Saturday night, five of us went out for a nice fun dinner at a Italian restaurant. Lots of laughs were had, plenty of one dollar bills were exchanged, and food was all right (next time we'll go to the cheesecake factory though).
After a long weekend photos, videos, cosplayers, panels, dealer's room, artists, photographers, shady gangs, hotel rooms and food, we were on our way home on Sunday afternoon. The two hotel rooms for three nights ended up being just under $400, and the parking surprisingly ended being only $14 bucks, a very nice steal, somehow. The drive to Toronto, and to the homes of my two carpool buddies ended up taking just a bit over 11 hours of driving. Once me and my girlfriend arrived at her house at 3:30 in the morning, I collapsed on my bed. After eating a bowl of cheerios.
August 3, 2010
Reader Comments (1)
Hi! I was wondering if you would mind if I used your photo that you took of me? I was the Astrid from "How to Train Your Dragon" I love the picture you took! Thanks!