Charm City Circulatin'

Charm City, aka Baltimore, Maryland. My boyfriend and I decided to take this trip because we had been here before on a day trip and we were impressed by the charm of the inner harbor. Also, I didn’t get any crab when I was there the first time so I had to come back. It would also be an awesome place to take an inexpensive vacation. It was nice not having to leave the country and we certainly learned a lot about Baltimore’s place in American history. Come back with me as I re-visit Baltimore, Maryland: famous for much more than dungeoness and back fin crab. It is the birthplace of popular shows like Homicide, Life on the Streets (We actually visited the location of the precinct and the Waterfront Bar in Fells Point that Detectives Munch and Bayliss bought) and the Wire (we were advised against taking pictures and field trips to that part of town) and it is the birth place of such jazz/ragtime legends as Eubie Blake and Billie Holiday. This charming sea-board city definitely deserves its moniker.

A short cab ride from downtown Penn station to our hotel-the Mount Vernon Hotel and Café, conveniently located in the Mount Vernon section of Baltimore, a bit north of downtown Baltimore. We felt special to be staying in this National Historic District, especially since the area was featured in an episode of the re-runs of Homicide, Life on the Streets. (A sniper shooting occurred right in front of the Walters Art Museum, where Ray and I passed every day on one of our walks down to the harbor!) Ok. That’s the last time I mention Homicide: Life on the Streets.

So we’re walking along Charles Street, and we’re hungry so we stop into Mick O’Shea’s, an Irish pub style restaurant to whet our whistles. I had my mind set on a burger and some fries-that’s what I was in the mood for. Our waitress comes over and just as I was about to open my mouth to tell her that I needn’t look at the menu-I knew what I wanted she asked, “do you want to hear our specials?”
“Sure…”
She listed a bunch of tasty items, chief among them: mussels-actually the swordfish sounded pretty good too but-once I heard mussels, I heard nothing more. That was going to be it for me, especially since seafood is a Maryland staple.

I also ordered a Guinness, which was poured to perfection. She poured off the first bit, and then let it sit for a while before she brought it to me. Ahhhh…and then the mussels arrived (oh yeah, Ray ordered a bacon cheeseburger, I think. He said he really enjoyed it.) and I was in heaven. The bread was crusty and crispy, with a slight cheesiness to it. It was perfect for dipping into the mussel sauce, which was a tomato/white wine concoction. Usually I don’t fancy tomato based sauces, but this was just light enough and with the cheesy crusty bread it worked! Delicious.

On to the next stop…we walked down Charles Street down to the Inner Harbor. This is the reason we were in Baltimore. When Ray and I initially visited, we went to the Baltimore visitor center which is located in the harbor, gathering information about the city and what we were going to do, and we fell in love with the harbor. We took the 10 dollar all day water taxi back and forth between Fells Point and the various points of interest in the harbor until it was time to go home. We vowed to come back when we had more time to spend and here we were. One place we didn’t get a chance to visit along the route was Fort McHenry-the place where the Star Spangled Banner was written.



Fort McHenry
I will never forget what I felt as I looked out over Baltimore Harbor, imagining what Francis Scott Key saw, which moved him to write these infamous words: “O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave…”,he was a witness to the miracle that is the United States of America. This tiny nation only in it’s infancy that defeated the all powerful Britain and her imposing navy. It was a quite moving experience to walk around Fort McHenry, and to see what the flag and the anthem has meant to generations of Americans.

The picture of the 1968 summer Olympics held in Mexico City, where black athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in the black power salute and Australian Peter Norman wore a civil rights badge in support of them, was displayed at the exhibit. The athletes were banned from the games and the Australian was left off the 1972 Olympic team as a result of their disrespect. Many Americans were offended. I was conflicted. Here I am a Black American woman, who loves this country and is proud to be an American trying to reconcile the ugliness of racism and inequality with the fact that Tommie Smith and John Carlos still stood on that podium as champions of the United States of America. To me, their fists symbolized the defiance that allowed us to defeat the British. We will always overcome. As one of the exhibits mentioned, the American flag is all things to all Americans. This could be seen when every American at the Fort, Black, brown, white, Asian, man, woman and child took their hats off, placed their hands over their hearts and bowed their heads (some sang) in reverence to our National Anthem. I was truly moved to tears.

Ray did his part for his country by assisting the Rangers and other visitors load canons in preparation for the British in a reenactment of the battle of Fort McHenry.

Now, we were exhausted, it was hot as hell out there on the battlefield! Time to head back to Fells Point and grab some ice-cream and a milk-shake at Maggie Moo’s. They really take pride in preparing your ice-cream. I ordered a Cheesecake break; vanilla ice cream with strawberries, and teddy grahams. The lovely lady preparing my cone asked me if I wanted two or three scoops. “Just one please!”
She handed me a tub of the best ice-cream I’ve ever tasted, carefully smoothed out with some sort of ice-cream smoothing contraption, (she really put her all into it) which enabled the strawberries and grahams to be mixed in perfect proportions. By the time she finished with the ice-cream, it was way larger than two scoops. She had to put the ice cream in a tub, with the waffle cone stuck on top. I certainly was not mad at that! Ray got a vanilla milkshake with little chocolate bits in it-not chocolate chips, little chocolate bits. Pure bliss. Yes, we were quite content, he and I, and we sat in the square and listened to live entertainment (some dude with an electric guitar and am amp, banging out oldies) We sat there until the darkening clouds told us that perhaps we’d better get a move-on. We took the water taxi back to the inner harbor and caught the Charm City Circulator (a free shuttle (yes free!!!!) that connects downtown Baltimore with East and West, North and South. There are two routes: purple and orange. The purple runs North to South and brings us back to our hotel. The orange travels East and West, which brings me to a convenient little segue:

It rains frequently in Baltimore, it’s annoying but it stops after a while and then out comes the brilliant, blazing sun and you would never know it had rained. We expected this and so we didn't bring our umbrellas thinking we'd be someplace long enough to wait out a shower. Well, my beloved suggested that today of all days, we ride the Orange shuttle, and see where it goes. I was a bit skeptical, having noticed the darkening sky-not to mention I was hungry and I wanted to go back to the hotel and grab some grub.

Long story short: the orange route took us away from our destination (the hotel) and we had to get off. Sure enough, we are hit with a monsoon! Flood warnings are in effect! I have never experienced rain like this; and when I say experienced, I mean it. I was in it, around it, under it, through it and over it. It was a torrential downpour and I nearly drowned. All I can say is Thank God for the cleanliness of downtown Baltimore. When water came gushing out at us, and we couldn’t avoid puddles we weren’t left with grime, debris or sediment in our shoes. Finally we make our way home, dry off and get ready for a night on the town!


PowerPlant Live!

Plain and simple, the place was a bit too noisy for our tastes-maybe if I was 10 years younger it wouldn’t have bothered me, even though it did seem that whatever your pleasure this spot could accommodate There was a comedy club, a few bars, featuring live entertainment and some seemingly decent restaurants. We ordered a couple of drinks-A Long Island Iced-Tea for me, and a Heineken for Ray. His rule of thumb is to always order a beer unless he knows how the drinks are made because you can’t go wrong. He was right. My Long Island Iced-Tea was pretty weak, but hey-we weren’t in Long Island were we? Anyhooo….we finished our drinks and then we bounced! Off to Woody's rum bar aka Slaintes Irish pub in Fells Point. I really wanted to hear live music, particularly jazz but it wasn’t in the cards for me this evening. So we had a couple more watered down drinks (Ray stuck wisely with beer) and then headed across the street for some brick oven pizza.

We stepped out into the balmy night air, and wouldn’t you know it-here was my live entertainment. The sax dude was still out there jamming-and he had an audience too-a young couple winding and grinding to his tunes. Not bad.

So we head over to BOP’s, which according to Kevin Bacon should stand for “Baltimore’s Only Pizza! Perhaps he’s right. Now, I must admit that I haven’t actually tasted any other pizza in Baltimore but- one bite of this chicken feta pizza and it definitely was amore. I’m not the biggest pizza fan but this was the best pizza I’ve ever tasted. Eating our pizza on the pier while watching the waves roll in definitely enhanced the experience. It was bliss. My pizza crust was perfectly thin and crisp,chicken grilled to perfection, with fragrant basil, savory feta and smooth olive oil to round out the flavors. As I took my first bite I swear angels came down and started tap-dancing on my tastebuds! Unfortunately Ray wasn't as impressed with his pepperoni and sausage pizza- I felt for my honey, but why anyone faced with such an assortment of delicious meat, veg, cheese (even seafood!) combinations would choose plain ol’ pepperoni and sausage is beyond me. Oh well, moving right along…to our last day in Baltimore…

Obrycki’s
A little expensive but, in my opinion definitely worth it! I’m glad that I ate at this famed establishment before they close their doors forever this November. What I gathered from our waiter John, was that the place was becoming too expensive to run not only in terms of cost but also manpower. They have some sort of deal where they will be working out of Cheesecake factory or something. Unfortunate. Now. Back to me and my crab experience. I came back to Maryland to redeem the horrible crab experience I had the first time around. I had never eaten a steamed crab before so John was kind enough to show me how. Literally. He said since I was a newbie he’d start me off with two large steamed dungeoness crabs. When they came, he bibbed me up and brought me a mallet. Next, his fingers were all up in my crab breaking off the pieces I shouldn’t eat, showing me where the good lump crab meat was, and how to discard the lungs. Then he showed me the “mustard” of the crab. I could eat it or not. Some people like the taste of it, but a long time ago somebody told me that the “mustard” was crab feces. So…no. I would not be eating it. I was grateful for the lesson, and finally ready to tackle my next crab all on my own. Ray looked on like a proud papa-watching me in all my pounding glory: I wacked and cracked, and shellacked the shiznit out of the shell. I broke the crab open and dug my fingers in like a pro. I got so into it that I began to just bite the legs sucking the succulent Obrycki salt, pepper and butter seasoning off the shell. It was a simply delicate, but seriously savory seasoning. I looked over at Ray, who by now had finished eating his fish and chips and was looking a bit bored and slightly annoyed.
“What?”
He claimed he was looking around the restaurant at people who had ordered way more crabs than I, and they were already finished. He wanted to know why I had to take 2 hours to eat 2 crabs. I looked at the “leavings” of the other customers and noticed that they left more of the crab behind than I did. So there! If it weren’t for the fact that we were the only two people left in the restaurant and the waiters were not “discreetly” packing up and stacking tables all around us, I might still be sitting there sucking the meat out of those tasty crab legs.
Meanwhile…Ray decided to order some dessert to “keep him company.” Much to my chagrin, he ordered my least favorite food item: bread pudding. However when John brought it over to the table and dropped the plate in front of Ray , I was enticed by the scent of brown sugar and cinnamon; also the pudding was sitting on some type of sauce-I think it was a custard. Nevertheless, I had to taste it. Oh my!!!!! There go the angels on my taste-buds again this time they’re breaking! Again, this is the best bread pudding I’ve tasted, and I’ve never been a fan of bread pudding. The cinnamon and sugar gave the bread a sweet crust and the raisins were warm and juicy and they added just the right amount of “tart” to the ensemble. Oh sorry- I’m finally done with my crabs. I must say the whole Obrycki’s was a great experience-what would have been nicer was if our waiter, John had thanked us for his tip. I found that a bit rude….

Ciao to Charm City
A pretty melancholy morning. I did not want to get out of the hotel bed. Solemnly we packed up our things and went down for one last breakfast at the hotel’s café. I don’t even remember what I ate. We came back up to the room, reminisced about the good times, Maggie Moos, and how we would miss the harbor and late night BOP’s. I began to cry…(Just kidding; I didn’t cry.) We headed back down to the lobby with our luggage to check out; the most devastating part of any vacation.

We walked a short block to the shuttle bus. This was the last trip we’d take on the Charm City Circulator and it was taking us back to back to where our beautiful escape had begun. How quickly it seemed to come to an end. Ray and I waited in silence (there was nothing left to say) and when I saw that big white shuttle bus with the big purple swoosh on the side pull up, ready to take us back to reality, I truly did want to cry. We climbed aboard and took our ride to the final stop: Penn Station where we sat and waited for Amtrack train number 84 to take us home…

We know we’ll be back.

*Things I want to mention:
Thanks to the hotel staff at Mount Vernon Hotel and Café. They were very friendly and accommodating.

Places to visit:
Reginald Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History-a must see for anyone who is interested in the Black History of Baltimore. I didn’t realize how much Baltimore has given to us in terms of Black culture, leadership and intellect…

Eubie Blake National Jazz Center and Cultural Institute: It’s also an after-school arts instruction center. One of the leading composers of Ragtime music, his musical Shuffle Along was one of the first Broadway musicals to be written by African Americans. His musical also featured a young chorus girl named Josephine Baker who went on to gain notoriety in France as an acclaimed dancer and singer.

Thanks for everything Baltimore.