Lunch with the Elephants

Every year when the circus comes to Baltimore, they do a special lunch with the elephants at the nearby Lexington Market.    It’s a Baltimore tradition.  And according to what I’ve read, Baltimore is the only city that hosts such an event annually.  When I told the kids this, they said, “Well, at least Baltimore has one good thing about it.”  Hahaha… these kids may have been born and raised in Maryland, but their blood runs black and gold…. 

I have been wanting to go for years, but it hasn’t yet worked out with our schedule.   It’s in the middle of the day in the middle of a work/school week and it isn’t super easy to find out the day and time. 

This year we were able to go.  I was so excited!  I packed us a lunch so we wouldn’t have to spend any money other than parking.  We picked Scott up from work and drove to Baltimore.  We got there in plenty of time to secure a spot and wait for the elephants to march in.  While we waited, we got to be entertained by some Chick-Fil-A cows and some circus clowns.  The three year old particularly enjoyed these acts.

At noon, the elephants march right down the streets of Baltimore to a parking lot outside Lexington Market where they get to feast on 1100 oranges, 1000 apples, 500 heads of lettuce, 700 bananas, 400 pears and 500 carrots.  After that ginormous buffet, they gave the elephants watermelon.  It was really neat to watch them stomp on the watermelon to break them open and then use their trunks to load them into their mouths.

They passed out these silly clown noses at the beginning of the show  My 8 year old was the only one to wear hers faithfully the hour before it started, through the show, while we ate our lunch, and in the car on the ride home.   She even put one on her doll on our ride home.