Day 254: Thursday, May 16, 2013

Port to Port: Baltimore, Maryland

Underway: 0:00 am      Motor Off: 0:00 pm      Miles Traveled: 0      Stayed At: Free Dock

Mile 38 to Mile 38: After a mini-introduction to Baltimore yesterday, today we headed out for some serious exploration. We started the day with breakfast at Vikki’s Fells Point Deli just a few minutes from our dock. Finally, a great breakfast place – two eggs over medium perfectly done, a pile of crisp bacon and two better than average (but not as good as Al’s) pancakes for a little over $5. Quick service too. Before we left we were chatting with the waitress and Vikki about where we were from and a Baltimore police officer sitting by us heard we were from Minnesota and he proudly showed us the Vikings pendant around his neck – he is a die-hard fan . He even travels to Minnesota several times a year to go to “home” games. He even had a picture of himself with Cris Carter on his phone. That’s dedication. It was fun talking with him. We’ll be back – I just have to decide what to have for breakfast tomorrow.

Baltimore has an amazing network of free circulator buses that allow you to travel all over the city for free. What an amazing concept – make it easy for people to get around and spend money in the city. We were going to start our day making a loop on the Orange Bus just to get an idea of some of the different neighborhoods. We made it about half way before we hopped of to wander a little. You never know what you are going to discover. We hit a CVS pharmacy, the FedEx office and the Washington Monument in the Mount Vernon neighborhood. We walked by a beautiful old building that looked interesting so we went in and discovered a small museum with an exhibit on Stephen Crane, the award winning author of the Red Badge of Courage and many other articles and books, a war correspondent, a poet and a journalist. He died at 29 years old. The building also housed a classic old library – The Peabody Library – what a treasure. You can’t smell a digital book. And the best was yet to come.

A couple blocks from the Peabody was the William T. Walters Museum. What an amazing discovery. We spent almost 5 hours wandering through time from the ancient world to the medieval world (complete with knights armor) to Greek and Roman sculpture to Renaissance art to a whole building of oriental art and everything in between. What an astounding collection and a little overwhelming. It is amazing to see how human creativity has evolved over the years – we would have a hard time reproducing some of the art from 1,000 years ago. And all of it was free (we left a donation).

We were exhausted but our day was going to get even better. When we finally got back to the boat, we had a neighbor. A sailboat had pulled in front of us – the Mimi Rose. She is not any ordinary sailboat, but a modern wood sailboat –- with classic details making her a work of art. We have found the new standard to aim for in our search for a new boat. We also met her owners – Anne and Collin – who are working onboard while traveling the eastern seaboard. This year they got as far south as Georgia where they spent the winter exploring the many rivers that branch off from the Intracoastal Waterway. They are heading home to Maine to explore this summer. Within minutes of meeting them, they invited us onboard and we sat in the cockpit chatting, laughing and sharing stories until almost 10 pm (thanks guys for the hospitality). Have I mentioned that life is good lately?