Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip Report Visiting Baltimore & DC at spring break, OH MY!

Oh, how life gets in the way after vacation!

DS just moved to Baltimore in mid-March, so spring break was the perfect chance to visit. He lives in Elkridge so we stayed at the Country Inn & Suites by BWI. Just about every possible hotel chain has a place in the area. Not many restaurants but we traveled to find those.

DS treated us to our first night's dinner at G&M in Linthicum. It was about 5 minutes from our hotel. This was our first crab cake of the trip. Don't let the parking lot fool you, it might be full but you won't necessarily have a long wait. You can choose one or two crab cakes with your meal, one was plenty. Of the four I tried, this was the driest but not dried out. Large lumps of crab with minimal filler.

The next day we headed to downtown. I wanted to see the original Washington Monument. We parked on Mt. Vernon Square. The walk up the monument is 288 steps, so not for the faint of heart. The views were amazing. We then headed over to Lexington Market. We walked but would not try it after dark. We had our second crab cake of the trip at Faidley's in the market. It is basically a take-out place with table tops to stand and eat. Again a very good cake, one of the moistest we had. We headed back to the car and more of Baltimore.

We wound our way towards the harbor and over to Fort McHenry. The fort reminds me of the ones at the Straits of Mackinac in Michigan. Very good introductory movie in the Visitor's Center. It was a sunny but windy day so cool being on the water's edge. Great displays throughout the buildings inside the fort. Would have loved to walk the perimeter of the grounds but the wind was too strong.

After the fort, DS took us to Arundel Mills Mall and the Duclaw Brewery. He had the crabcake sandwich which was again a very good cake.

On Sunday we headed to the Inner Harbor and the Aquarium. DS had purchased tickets ahead of time so no problem with timed entry. Even at 10 am the aquarium was very busy. We then walked over to the west side of the harbor for lunch at Phillips. DH made the mistake of ordering the special, which was an Alaskan King crab cake. He thought it tasted more like a salmon cake. I stuck with the jumbo lump crab cake and again had a great meal. It was so nice that the restaurant had the outside doors open to the patio seating. After lunch we worked our way over to the USS Constellation for a look. We love history so this was a great place on a sunny day.

Monday we had rain, so DH and I headed to Annapolis while DS was working. We did the trolley tour that starts at the Visitor's Center. It was worth every penny. Our driver/guide was very knowledgeable. It was still raining off & on when we got off the trolley so we headed out to Kent Island where my nephew lives. He took us to lunch at The Narrows. Another place for a very good crab cake. After lunch it was clearing so the drive back to Baltimore was very pleasant.

Tuesday we headed into DC for the day. We took the MARC from the airport station. Not sure how easy it is to get from the airport to the station. Our hotel shuttle dropped us off. Once at Union Station we hopped on the Metro for the Mall. Most folks were headed to the Tidal Basin for the cherry blossoms. Unfortunately the wind and rain from the previous days had knocked lots of flowers off the trees, so not at the peak. It was very cold and windy, so we were glad to have hats/hoods and gloves. After the Tidal Basin we made our way to the WW II memorial. Found my dad's name on the registry in the small building next to the memorial. We worked our way down to the Korean War Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial and Vietnam Memorial before heading for the museums.

The museums were very crowded. We arrived just after noon at the American Hostory Museum and had lunch in the cafe. They had surprisingly good pulled pork. Our main objective was the flag exhibit on the first floor. After that we headed next door to the Natural History Museum. It was even more crowded than the first museum. We worked our way through a few of the halls then headed back on the Metro to Union Station. The MARC was right on time and had us back to Baltimore in 30 minutes.

It was a short visit but we know we will be back in the area again.