BALTIMORE, a major city and popular tourist destination in Maryland, has a long history as an important seaport. It’s historic Inner Harbor District, one of Baltimore’s newest and most upscale neighborhoods, has made the city into a major center for tourism and travel. As such, the city was worth more than just a stopover on our way from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., staying there two nights at the Hyatt Place Baltimore Inner Harbor, which was walking distance from its namesake.
The Inner Harbor, a model of urban renaissance, planning and development in cities around the world, reversed the city’s decline and reconnected Baltimore with its waterfront, gradually transforming it with award-winning parks and plazas surrounded by office buildings, hotels and leisure attractions. If you are a tourist, you have to come here as it offers more to see and do than you can imagine.
Considered the heart of Baltimore, the Inner Harbor is home to the shops and boutiques of Harbor Place, Fells Point and Harbor East, upscale crab shacks and amazing restaurants, most of Baltimore’s excellent museums and major hotels, and renowned attractions. We explored the area by walking the 7-mile brick Waterfront Promenade that connects all the action, feeling the breeze on our faces. One of the most popular, unique and especially nice way of touring the city’s main sights for a day (and admiring the skyline from the water) is via water taxis.
The popular and enormous National Aquarium of Baltimore has a collection of more than 16,500 specimens representing 660 species, with exhibits including a multistory Atlantic coral reef, an open ocean shark tank, a 4D immersion theater, a tropical rain forest, a glass pavilion with Australian wildlife and a mammal pavilion that holds Atlantic bottlenose dolphins.
The Historic Ships of Baltimore, at Piers 1, 3 and 5, features four historic ships permanently docked in the harbor. Jandy and I climbed aboard and experienced the USS Constellation (first launched in 1854, it is the only Civil War-era ship still afloat) and the USCGC Taney (last fighting ship still afloat that survived the attack on Pearl Harbor). The two other ships are the submarine USS Torsk (the last ship to sink an enemy vessel in World War II) and the Chesapeake (a US Coast Guard lightship from the 1930s).
Other attractions include the renowned American Visionary Museum (dedicated to outsider art), the kid-mesmerizing Maryland Science Center (has three levels of exhibits, a planetarium and an Imax theater plus a special exhibit on blue crabs), the Port Discovery Children’s Museum, Ripley’s Believe It or Not Odditorium and the Baltimore Museum of Industry. The Baltimore World Trade Center has an observation deck (Top of the World) on the 27th floor which, offers sweeping 360-degree birds-eye views of the city. On the pedestrian promenade outside the building is a memorial to the victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
While you won’t run out of attractions to visit in the Inner Harbor, there are also many attractions throughout the city that one should not miss. Any visit to Baltimore is never complete without dropping by Fort McHenry. A prominent tourist destination, the fort is visited each year by thousands of visitors as this is where, during the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key, inspired by the tattered but still waving American flag on the fort, wrote the poem that would later become the “Star Spangled Banner,” the US national anthem. It’s also a popular spot for Baltimoreans to run, walk their dogs, enjoy a picnic or just sit by the waters of Chesapeake Bay and enjoy the breeze and views of the city.
From the fort, we boarded a Charm City Circulator bus, part of a fleet of free bus shuttles that travel four routes throughout the city, and dropped off near the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Also called the Baltimore Basilica, it is the first Roman Catholic cathedral built in the United States.
A short walk brought us to the Walthers Art Museum, which houses a collection of masterworks of ancient Egypt, Greek sculpture, Roman sarcophagi, Medieval ivories, illuminated manuscripts, Renaissance bronzes, Old Master European and 19th-century paintings, Chinese ceramics and bronzes, Art Deco jewelry, and ancient Near East, Mesopotamian or ancient Middle East items. Unlike many museums of its kind, the entrance here was free.