My daughter and I went out last night. I gave her tickets at Christmas for the Broadway Across America show "West Side Story" in Baltimore at the Hippodrome Theater. I wanted to "document" the event so I had Tom take our pic before we left:
Because we both love sushi, I also added a dinner at a Baltimore sushi restaurant that I had heard about for some time now: RA Sushi.
Driving downtown is not something I do often and I'm not very comfortable doing so. It is always such a relief when that part of it is over. We easily found the restaurant but I didn't see any close by parking garages. Everything was either private or street parking. I was starting to get anxious over the matter (timing was somewhat tight) when we found great parking in easy walking distance. And because it was street parking, we spent $3 instead of $20.
We were immediately seated in RA Sushi. Talk about noisy!! The place was packed. The environment is dark except where the huge windows are on one side of the restaurant. It has a warehouse feel to it with ceilings they may have been as high as twenty feet. We immediately started trying to make heads or tails of the menu placed in front of us. Thankfully Kim, our great waitress, came over and helped make some great choices. We mentioned that we had to be out of there by 7:30pm in order to allow enough time to get to the theater. When she brought back our drinks, she let us know that she got our order in ahead of a large party to ensure there wouldn't be any delay.
Our first item was the RA Chips and Salsa:

RA CHIPS & SALSA 
Spicy tuna tartare mixed with cucumber, avocado & fresh salsa; served with wonton chips.
This was really good!! I highly recommend it!
Next came these:

The rolls on the the long plate were from their Signature Sushi list:
ULTIMATE SHRIMP TEMPURA ROLL
Spicy kani kama crab mix, cucumber & shrimp tempura rolled &
topped with seared tuna & avocado
The others are maki (a cut roll) sushi rolls: spicy tuna and spicy scallops. We get these at our local favorite sushi restaurant, Toki Sushi in the Rocks Springs Shopping Center. I really like the spicy tuna better than our favorites from TS but we both agreed we liked the TS spicy scallops a bit more. We unanimously agreed the Ultimate Shrimp Tempura rolls with the seared tuna were out of this world good.
We dug into our dessert so fast we forgot to take a photo! So I borrowed this from their website:

SWEET MOCHI TRIO
A traditional Japanese dessert—ice cream wrapped in sweet rice cake; mango, strawberry & vanilla flavors garnished with sliced kiwi & strawberries
Our order didn't have any of the mango flavored cakes, but the vanilla and strawberry were simply fabulous.
Kim volunteered to take our picture before our dessert came out:

Not sure why my face is *that* red, but attempts to color correct weren't working, so I left it as is.
We made it out of there in plenty of time, while managing not feeling overly rushed in the process. Now the hard part! Getting from RA Sushi to the Hippodrome required driving through the heart of downtown. As it was almost 7:30pm, we were well passed rush hour traffic, thankfully. Google Maps came through for us as we had no problems making our way there. Still, this was a welcome sight!

The show itself was great. It was the first time I went into a show not already knowing the music. I also really didn't know much about the story beyond two warring gangs called the Jets and the Sharks. The choregraphy and dancing were fantastic. Sometimes it was hard to decide who to watch! I thought the actors playing the title characters, Tony and Maria were really good (Ali Ewoldt was just lovely in this role). The actress playing Anita was an especially good dancer and singer.
The small role of Glad Hand was played by Stephen DeRosa to perfection. Bravo!
The drive home was uneventful and we were safely tucked into our beds by midnight. It was a perfect night out with my fabulous daughter.