Baltimore

Back in the summer of 2007, Zoe and two of her friends made it to National History Day in Washington D.C.  While on that trip, we spent five days in Washington D.C., then spent the last two days in Baltimore, Maryland.

The harbor area has been recently renovated and has lots of shops and restaurants.

But what is Baltimore famous for? Fresh crab. So I wanted fresh crab. Well, after crashing and taking a nap for a few hours, Zoe and I got up and looked at the map, and I found a place about 10-15 blocks down the harbor that had fresh crab. So we headed out on foot. It is about 8 p.m. at night.

One of the first places we saw on our walk was an Irish pub. I told Zoe if she hadn't been with me, I may have gone in and checked it out. It was named after James Joyce, and it sounded kind of cool.

As we kept walking toward the restaurant, we were in a neighborhood with houses really close to each other with stoops out front. I think they are called row houses, maybe. When we walked by one of these buildings, Zoe got really excited because there was a table outside one of the doors with a chess table on it, and two old men playing chess. She thought it was just like something you'd see in a movie.

When we were about five blocks into our walk, I stopped and wondered if this was such a wise thing to do. This was uncharted territory for us. But I guess we are more adventurous than I thought, because we kept walking.

We made it to the restaurant, and actually ate at the wrong one, but that's okay. We did get crab, but not sure how fresh it was.

We headed back and toyed with the idea of hailing a taxi, but we had no idea how one goes about doing that, so we walked.

I headed us up a few street too far at one point, and as we were walking down the street there was a big police station, so that made me feel pretty good. But then we got to the crosswalk, and on the side of the building across the street it said "videos, lingerie and books" I figured we shouldn't keep walking that way, so we took a left past the "Gospel Mission", and told Zoe to now walk quickly.

Most of this area actually seemed safe, but we did go down one street with a vacant lot, and, as we got closer to this vacant lot, a big black rat scurried across the road into the lot, carrying a plastic grocery bag. The rat was about the size of our Pomeranian Sadie. You gotta love the city!!

Well, I got us back on track, and we made it back to our hotel safe and sound. That was our evening in Baltimore.

I remember after returning home, telling this story to someone who was familiar with the town.  Their reaction was that we were lucky because Baltimore had the #1 crime rate in the country. 

But I did actually feel safe the whole time....and Zoe and I always have a great story to tell about our Baltimore adventure!!