Discover BALTIMORE!

excerpted from the

IMI DISCOVER BALTIMORE

TRAVEL GUIDE

by Joanne Miller

Entry garden, Little Italy

At first, I had a tough time getting a handle on Baltimore. Every city has a certain “feel” to it, and my idea of what Baltimore was kept slipping away, hard to pin down as the weather. In June, Baltimore might as well have been on the equator: thunderstorms and bright sun battled it out every day. My impressions of the city came and went like the clouds.

Baltimore (locals actually call it BAL-mer) began to take shape when I took to the streets on foot. People are casually friendly--all kinds engaged me in conversation. On Howard Street, a thin young man carried a rusted but quite good Eames chair down the street; he'd found it in the junkyard and wanted to sell it to the antique dealers there--he asked me how much I thought he could get. Two passersby chimed in with their opinions. An elderly man on Charles Street emerged from a bookstore and asked me the proper French translation of the phrase “a man without money”. But the sweetness emanating from the people on the street is balanced by the rumble of rough neighborhoods not far from the center of town and the increased cost of living in Baltimore thanks to a booming tourist business; still, there are plenty of good deals here.

My only real complaint about Baltimore is that not enough people called me hon. Every native Baltimorean I talked to not only told me what a great place it was to grow up in, but that people from waitresses to taxi drivers would address me in terms of endearment. Baltimore has not only changed from the days of H. L. Mencken, but it has changed in the last few decades--more for the better, in spite of my lack of hons.

Orientation

Baltimore is made up of dozens of small neighborhoods, many of which are exclusively residential. This regional guide is divided into groups of attractions, accommodations and restaurants in the city’s main neighborhoods:

Uptown/Mount Vernon, site of the Washington Tower, and Belvedere, east of Mount Vernon, were easily the most socially prominent neighborhoods in Baltimore during the 19th century, and have remained architecturally interesting. Bolton Hill, southwest of the Maryland Institute of Art, is another still-fashionable area of 19th-century townhouses; F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, radio star Gary Moore, and the Cone sisters all lived there. Farther north, Hampden was a New England-style mill town that has long since become part of the city.

Inner Harbor is the area most casual visitors to the city are familiar with—it’s the site of the Aquarium and HarborPlace, the bustling center of the restored portion of town. Nearby, between the attractions of the inner harbor and Fell’s Point, Little Italy (between Pratt Street to President Street, on the inner harbor) is a special place to enjoy the cuisine of Roma.

West Harbor, more than ten blocks away from the bustle of the waterfront, contains several must-see attractions such as the B&O Railroad Museum and Roundhouse.

Fell's Point, a shipbuilding and trading port east of the city was once an outlying village that has become a tourist area. The streets are named after British places and people; row houses predate the Civil War, and were built for workers who labored in what was once Baltimore's deepest port. Today, Fell's Point offers visitors numerous shops, galleries, and restaurants; walking tours originate from the visitor center, 808 S. Ann St., 410/675-6750. Further east, Canton also retains many of its original structures, and some consider it the most authentic of old Baltimore neighborhoods. Homes in these neighborhoods are often sheathed in formstone, a white or colored fake stone wall-covering sold as part of a widespread scam during the mid-1950s (characters in the film Tin Men are based on formstone salesmen). Continuing east on Eastern Avenue, drivers will pass under a rail bridge decorated with a blue and white key pattern that marks the beginning of Greektown. This ethnic enclave has retained the shops and restaurants of the immigrants that settled there. Like Little Italy, above, it’s another wonderful neighborhood that has preserved a distinctive personality. The restaurants are justly famous in both areas.

Federal Hill, southwest of the inner harbor, is a once-outlying village that has been absorbed by the city. This 30-block area has become an upscale haven of beautiful older homes, restaurants, and shops. Homes in the tree-lined residential area of Otterbein, just to the west of Federal Hill, were once available to homesteaders for $1 a year.

South Harbor, extending east toward the Chesapeake, has many attractions of interest including the American Visionary Art Museum and Fort McHenry.

Go to Mapquest for complete maps of all of Baltimore’s neighborhoods: http://www.mapquest.com/

DISCOVER BALTIMORE

TRAVEL GUIDE

47 Pages $4.95 Pay with PayPal!

The National Aquarium in Baltimore

Junk art by the Baltimore Glassman at the American Visionary Art Museum

DISCOVER BALTIMORE!

is excerpted from Moon Handbooks: Maryland and Delaware by Joanne Miller (Avalon Travel Publishing USA 2001, 2004)

Available at your local bookstore, Amazon.com and other internet stores.

DISCOVER BALTIMORE TRAVEL GUIDE

47 Pages $4.95 Pay with PayPal!

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