We embarked on our latest Minnesota Twins trip to Baltimore last Thursday. It was touted to be the busiest travel day of the holiday weekend and the security line was no joke! Way over across the way is where the checkpoint was. This line was at least 3 times longer than when we went to LA last year, which terrified me. Luckily, it was moving at light speed and we were through in less than 40 minutes with plenty of time to spare. We didn't have to take anything out of our bags or remove shoes, which sped things up.
The game was our reason for visiting, but you know we made the most of our time there. After getting our rental car in record time, we found a BBQ food truck for lunch. We shared a brisket and turkey sandwich with sides of mac and cheese and beans.
The next stop is a Herrmann vacation must (if available), Krispie Kreme. We got a dozen to eat over our few days in town.
Fort McHenry was out next stop. I am sure I learned something about this in school, but did not remember until researching Baltimore. It's most notable for the Battle of Baltimore that took place in September 1814. American troops held off the British forces by both land and sea. They replaced the tattered and smaller storm flag with the oversized 30' x 42' flag that was typically raised each morning. Francis Scott Key observed the flag flying over the fort and began to pen the poem that would become The Star Spangled Banner. This site is now a National Monument and Historic Shrine to the events of those days.
We arrived just in time to participate in a flag ceremony. It wasn't too busy, so we were not able to use the full size flag, but this one was 17' x 25'. It had 15 stripes as well at the 15 stars for each state at the time.
They have many cannons staged still. Many of them were used during the War of 1812, but non necessarily at Fort McHenry.
We checked out a bombproof that was built in the event the fort took on heavy artillery fire. They have super thick walls with small air vents.
As we were exiting the bombproof, some kids told us we just missed a group of men marching past in uniform. We tracked them down and watched their musket demonstration.
We headed to our rental apartment for a breather before meeting our friends, Ben and Stacy, for dinner. They moved out here last year and were tops on our list to see if possible. We met at Dylan's Oyster Cellar just a few miles north of where we stayed. I mentioned to here the week before that I had never had raw oysters and she delivered on the planning!
I was terrified of eating them, but they were really good! We split a sampler platter that had 3 varieties.
This video is pretty funny. It seems like I didn't like it, but I was really freaking out because I realized I didn't know if I was supposed to chew it or swallow it whole. I decided to chew, which was the correct choice.
We followed that up with a softshell crab sandwich.
We had a great coffee shop 1/2 block away and walked there each morning for our caffeine boost.
We drove to Annapolis on Friday morning. We found an area along the waterfront to park and explore. There was a Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley memorial honoring those to arrived on these shores in the bondage of slavery.
We walked up to the capital building which is the oldest one in continuous legislative use. This town is so old and still has so many quaint paver streets and other features.
Annapolis is also home to the Naval Academy. They have a museum you can visit, but need a passport to enter and we didn't bring ours.
Our lunch stop was a batimore classic, Altman's Deli.
A pastrami and corned beef reuben and potato knish was plenty to share.
We filled the afternoon by seeing the new Pixar movie, Elemental. See a movie on vacation you say? It just seemed to make sense to keep our Pixar streak alive!
Up Next: Babe Ruth, Twins game, Inner Harbor, and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment