After a good night's rest in Washington, D.C., we were ready to tackle our next destination on the itinerary: Baltimore! We were quite excited as this was our first time there, but there wasn't much on our list of things to visit, so we only booked one night, thinking we had plenty of time to visit. Unfortunately (or fortunately), we were right, and by the end of the day, we were actually quite eager to leave the place.
As we were about to learn (the soft way through Google, fortunately), Baltimore has one of the highest crime rates in America, and is overall very poor. One of the places we were looking most forward to visiting is in the middle of a really poor and sketchy neighbourhood, so make sure you keep your valuables out of sight and don't wander off alone. Now, with that being said, we still really enjoyed The Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum! That house is so small and unassuming, it's hard to believe that this incredible author lived here... with his family, too! It is a National Historic Landmark, so you can expect to see important artifacts from Poe's life, a must if you are a fanatic. The shop had quite the amazing array of souvenirs, too. 💀🕯️📚
The nice lady at the counter gave us directions to walk to Poe's grave, which isn't too far from the house, but in hindsight I would recommend taking your car to go and not walking through the neighbourhood. There's a very nice memorial grave at the entrance of the graveyard, and another older grave near the back. There are many "mysteries" surrounding Poe's resting place, so if you like his writings, you'll like this place and its stories even more! As you can see from the numerous offerings, people still come here to honour his memory. Probably because we were getting close to Halloween, too! 🎃🐈🥀
We wanted to go check out the George Peabody Library, also known as the Cathedral of Books, but there was a wedding going on, so we just soaked in the beauty of the adjacent park before moving on to the Inner Harbor. The view from the harbour is amazing, and there are a lot of restaurants nearby, so this is a must-do when in the city. Just driving around lets you see all kinds of great architecture, too.
And that was it for our visit. After walking around a bit and not feeling entirely safe (I rarely say that, so I went with my guts), we decided to call it a day, grab some food and head to our Airbnb for the evening. That was fine, as we wanted to plan our next stop a little more carefully. Stay tuned, folks! 💜
TL;DR: When in Baltimore, be aware of your surroundings! Visit with a friend if you can. Edgar Allan Poe's teeny tiny house and his resting place will delight fans of his work, the Inner Harbor will give you great views and food, and just driving around will delight history and architecture lovers.
Comments