Baltimore Misadventures - Friday, Day 1

My friend Tricia and I went on a little weekend vacation to Baltimore last Friday. We got home on Sunday but I couldn't post because I was still recovering from the trip. What a trip it was. We knew there was a light rail in Baltimore so thought that we wouldn't need a car. That was probably the worst decision we made. Baltimore, like Cleveland, is not a walking city. The train only ran on one north/south track. Everything we wanted to see was east or west of the track. Most places were in walking distance but we spent A LOT of time walking and riding the train. Time that we could have used see more stuff. I wish we would have had a car. We wanted to leave a few places but were afraid that we'd spend so much time getting to another place - and that it might not be any better than where we were when we got there. Make sense? Well, here's the run down of what we did.

Friday - Safely arrived, took the train from the airport to our hotel and missed our stop. Walked to the Mount Vernon Hotel. Now, this hotel got mixed reviews online. We thought that since it was a hospitality management school's hotel, we would be supporting the school and that it could be interesting. Well, the place was a dump. There was no air conditioning. We had to have someone come and prop open the window (that had no screen) so that we could breath. There was no fan in the bathroom so the ceiling was moldy! The continental breakfast options were white toast, english muffins, brown bananas and cereal. The train stop was only a few blocks away but it was blocks of abandoned buidings. The Art Museum was only a few blocks away too, but in the opposite direction.

After putting our bags in the room we went to the harbor area and walked over to the American Visionary Art Museum. We were very hungry by then and first ate lunch at the Joy America Cafe. I had a beef fig quesadilla with a side of soggy fries and a Red Stripe - the Red Stripe was the best part. The museum had a very interesting exhibit about race, class and gender and beautiful mirror mosaics everywhere. Lots of inspiration! We bought some souveniers from the museum shop. One noticable thing was their lack of artists' merch. Although I was hoping to get a Ku Shu Lan (Chinese paper crafter) poster, I was like....duh, this woman cut up paper to decorate the mud walls in her Western China cave home. Um, maybe that's not something that should be reproduced for a tourist to hang up in her downstairs apartment in Northeast Ohio. Anyways, their sculpture buiding was kick ass and included a braball.

After the museum we took a Water Taxi to Fells Point for dinner and drinks. First we stopped at an Irish place called Kooper's Tavern. We then ate a dozen steamed crabs with mallets at Obrycki's and spent the rest of the evening at the Full Moon Saloon listening to bands, including one called Cowboy Amnesia.