Last year, after a few days in New York City with two friends, and my boyfriend was visiting some family and friends in Raleigh, NC, we decided to meet in an place in between, and suddenly Baltimore appeared as a non touristic - at least not for people from Argentina - and unexplored place for us.
When we chose Baltimore, we made it guided for the distance between cities, our love for the film director John Waters and the mistic that the city shows in movies and pictures, but we didn’t have any idea about the amount of specific gems that city hides.
As soon as we got to the city, we used GoogleLocals to make a to do list. We found lots of “Baltimore in one day” post, and we’ve made our own.
First, we needed to find a good place to stay close to the Airport, because we had a car and didn’t want to park - and pay- in Downtown. It is good to know you can find good chain hotels (we were at a Best Western, breakfast included) for a few bucks, and Baltimore has a good train service which stops 1 block away from the hotel.
So, we headed to Downtown by train, with my Locals’ running, and went into the World Trade Center Building. There. it was a place called Top of the World: Observation Level, a very touching experience with lots of testimonies - art installations, pictures among different elements related with victims of the 9-11 tragedy who were from Maryland. It was such an emotive experience.
After that, we need to catch up ourselves, so walk along the Inner Harbour Esplanade. There is the National Aquarium (we didn’t have enough time to get into), a Hard Rock Cafe, some specific and local restaurants, and the possibility to have a tour into the Historic Boats of Maryland: an old boat called Shakespeare and a submarine.
From there, you can catch a boat and go to the Fort McHenry or just cross the river until the other part of the city. We did it but later. Before that, we continued walking through the city, and headed to follow the Star-Spangled Banner National Historic Trail: this is a four or five blocks journey, where we found marks on the street and that ends in a historic house where the american flag was made. It’s a nice experience.
After that, we walked to Piccola Italia, the small region called Little Italy, where we ate pizza and continued the journey to the boat to cross the city.
We arrived at Fort McHenry but it was close. However, we walked and discovered an amazing place called: American Visionary Art Museum. It was fascinating and we got pretty nice pictures.
As it was Valentine’s day, and the day came to its end, so we walked to a nice hipster area called Federal Hill - sincerely, it looks like a ghost place, we don’t know if it is because it was during wintertimes or what - and we could visit organic markets, a nice Irish pub, and some fancy locals shops.
Google Locals offers lots of impressive recommendations to stay in Baltimore for one day or more, so definitely we are going to come back and stay longer as soon as we can.
PS: there is the Edgar Allan Poe’s house and John Waters usually gives stand up and music shows in town but if you wanna go, you need to get tickets in advance.