Charm City

We had driven past Baltimore many times on the way to other places (mostly Washington DC) but had never stopped for some exploration, so a couple of weekends ago, we decided to take advantage of a hotel deal Zack found and go for it.

We stayed at the Hotel Monaco, right downtown by the Inner Harbor. It was a beautiful historic building.

Our room was nice.

Unfortunately, we realized that the air conditioner in our room wasn't working at about midnight. They moved us to a new room and gave us free breakfast, and when we checked out in the morning, they ended up not charging us anything because of the inconvenience. So that was kinda awesome, and was totally worth changing rooms in the middle of the night.

Anyway, so we drove down there on Friday afternoon/evening after work, and got there just in time for the Orioles game. One of the streets bordering the stadium is called Eutaw street. :)

There are some perks to having a crappy baseball team. We showed up at game time and bought tickets at the gate for $6 each. Then, since the park was so empty, we moved down from our cheap seats to some really great seats in the bottom section on the first base line.

Phillies games always sell out in advance, so you can't buy tickets at the gate, and the cheap tickets are more than twice what they were in Baltimore. We love that our team is doing so well, don't get me wrong. But the fact that the Orioles suck made that game more fun for us. The Orioles lost, which was fine with us. I think they played the Dodgers. Zack can correct me if I'm wrong about that. There were a ton of Mormon missionaries at the game. Apparently the whole Baltimore mission got to go, so that was pretty fun to see so many of them there. All in all, a great time.

We intended to stay in Baltimore and explore on Saturday, but I woke up feeling pretty darn yucky. We tried to go out exploring, but I just couldn't do it so we headed home and vowed to head back soon to do all the stuff we didn't get to do the first time around. I did snap this picture before we left.

So 2 weeks later (on my next weekend off), we headed back. It happened to be Labor Day weekend. I had to work on Labor Day, but my holiday was the Friday before, so I still had a 3 day weekend. So we headed down on Thursday evening and stayed in a hotel pretty much next door to the other hotel we stayed in before. It wasn't as nice but was even cheaper than the other. The room had a sleep number bed, which we learned is basically just a glorified air mattress, and my side deflated during the night. We really have good luck with hotels, eh? So we changed rooms after the first night and the bed stayed inflated for the whole second night so that was good. But I definitely never want a sleep number bed.

Anyway, so on the Friday, we started our day by hitting up the National Aquarium, which was fabulous.

They had a big pool with mostly stingrays that you could look down on as you were going throughout the aquarium.

They had lots of pretty fish of course.

There were turtles.

And sharks.

And birds.

There was even a dolphin show.

We're pretty opposed to dolphin shows since we saw The Cove, but I guess I soothed my conscience a little by reminding myself that their dolphins were reared in captivity. And dolphins are really cute. All in all, a really nice aquarium. I think we like the one close to us in Camden a little better overall, but both are really nice. Next we got crab cake sandwiches at Phillips, which is famous for its crab cakes. They were delicious. After doing some shopping and riding the free bus around just to see the city a little, we took a 90 minute evening boat tour through the harbor. That was very fun-- probably the highlight of our trip. We saw battleships

and Fort McHenry (the battle there inspired the writing of our national anthem).

There is a buoy marking the spot where Francis Scott Key is believed to have been anchored while he was penning the Star Spangled Banner.

A bit beyond that is an old fort, built before the Civil War, partially under the direction of Robert E. Lee (now abandoned).

We got some good views of the famous Domino Sugar sign.

And some nice views looking back toward the city.

What a blast! We wrapped up our day with dinner at PF Changs (yum), which we polished off by sharing dessert.

On Saturday, we started out the day by visiting Baltimore's world trade center, which has an observation deck. Those are always fun, and this was no exception. We got some great views of the harbor.

Here is the aquarium from above.

And here is one of the USS Constellation (also pictured earlier in this post), which is what we toured next.

The Constellation was one of the last sails-only ships built by the US navy.

It is best known for capturing slave ships around the time of the Civil War.

It was fun to tour, although I am glad I did not have to live on a ship like that. After grabbing a quick lunch, we went on a walking tour. The guide talked a lot about the revitalization of Baltimore, and the architecture and such. One random thing we saw on our tour-- we passed a hotel that was once a Masonic lodge. Our tour guide informed us that there was a very nice women's restroom in that hotel. Just at the moment, the doorman of the hotel waved us over and ushered us all in the door, and then we took us all into the restroom. In 2009, it was in the Hall of Fame for the America's Best Restroom award. Funny, huh? Well it was very nice, with several different kinds of marble and crushed pearl on the walls.

And it was spotless of course. That was a fun little detour. Here's Zack with a library that we saw on our tour.

Here's me with the original Washington Monument.

This was a cool looking church.

We were sad because the library at the Peabody Institute was closed on the day of our tour, but someone happened to be in there and let us in to have a look. It was very pretty. I did not take any pictures, but here's what it looks like.

After our walking tour, we decided to head home. On the way out of town, we made one more stop. Here's me looking somber at Edgar Allen Poe's grave.

All in all, we found Baltimore to be a beautiful city. It reminded us of Philly in some ways, which is definitely a good thing. Maybe we'll get the chance to go back and explore even more some time.