Two days in Baltimore pack a cultural punch

There's no tour guide like a passionate local.


Baltimore was the next stop on our trip, where we were given the royal treatment by my Aunt Marian.  Originally a St. Louis native (she was my Mom's dearest childhood friend), her family moved here more than 30 years ago and now she's a stellar ambassador for the place.  We had just two days of sightseeing, but we seemed to pack in a week's worth.

Our favourite discovery was undoubtedly Hampton, a colonial mansion just north of Towson, in suburban Baltimore.  When it was completed in 1790 it was the largest private home in America.  Its crowning cupola, which the family said was modelled on the dome of their distant relatives' place Castle Howard, is a pretty good indication of their aspirations to grandeur.  As is the sprawling estate and village of outbuildings and slave quarters on show today (though the current grounds are a fraction of what the family once owned).  It was the first building taken under the wing of the National Park Service for its architectural significance.  In addition to being impressive, it's also free.  You even get a detailed private tour from volunteers who really know their stuff.


The interior is a walk through decorative styles of the United States' first century.  The whole place was closed for three years in the middle of the last decade to allow a major restoration.  It's more re-creation, really, with wallpapers, window treatments and upholstery in the "style of" rather than the original.  The effect is stunning.  Ground floor rooms capture specific periods from colonial to high Victorian, with colours so crisp and vibrant you expect the owners to pop in any minute.  The Federal period dining room with panoramic "scenes of Paris" wallpaper made me swoon with decorating envy.  Upstairs, they're still raising funds to complete the bedrooms but what's there now equals what you can see in many English National Trust houses.


Second best, and a far better known site, is Fort McHenry, just beyond the downtown area on the harbour.  It was while watching the shelling of this fort from captivity on a British ship that Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner during the War of 1812.  There's a good little museum here to that oft-forgotten conflict.  There's a dramatic film about the circumstances of Key's composition that ends with the anthem playing and the screen lifting on a glass wall revealing the fort with the flag waving on cue.  (Piers' English dislike of sentimentality or overt patriotism had him shuddering with revulsion; I was dabbing back a tear.)  If, like Piers, you're not so keen on the American flag waving, you can just go enjoy the fort, which is an intact star-shaped installation with lots of good examples of defensive embankments and cannon of various types.

Downtown, we were impressed by the Basilica, Baltimore's Roman Catholic cathedral.  It's a rare example of neoclassical style in an American church, with light colours, a streamlined interior and a coffered dome.  Nearby is the Walters Collection, a small museum that's the one place we wish we could have spent more time.  Much like the Wallace Collection in London, it's a quirky, diverse and very personal collection (in this case of father and son) installed in what was once a home.  What you see today has been remodelled to look like an Italian palazzo with a glass-covered roof and galleries leading off of it.  A great example of the quirkiness:  the chamber of wonders, a re-creation of one of those late-Renaissance private "kabinetts" that had a little bit of everything on show, from paintings to armour to indian artefacts to oddities from the natural world.  Should I ever be back in Baltimore, the Walters will get a whole day.  Surrounding the museum is the Mount Vernon neighbourhood, a gracious area of early 19th century homes, parks and tree-lined streets.

As intrepid as any tour bus driver, Marian took us through many other picturesque neighbourhoods, showed us evidence of the 19th century mills that made the city wealthy, drove us by Camden Yards (the baseball park that set the current American trend for modern stadiums built in an old-fashioned style), drove us around the harbour, showed us the train station from which Lincoln left for his inauguration in Washington and made sure we saw all the major buildings downtown.  We even found enough time to squeeze in a diversion to Annapolis, a picturesque harbour town that looks more like a film set for Moby Dick than the capital of a state and home to a national naval academy.  You can't miss the existence of the latter, however, as every 10th person on the streets seems to be wearing a cadet's crisp white uniform.


Beyond sightseeing, we also got dipped in local culture.  Our visit coincided with Preakness weekend; that race is as iconic to Baltimore as the Kentucky Derby is to Louisville.  I forgot to ask if there was a Preakness equivalent to a mint julep; the house drink at Marian's is a stiff gin and tonic.  We watched the race and attended a barbecue with the locals, where Marian's son introduced us to the fine art of beer can chicken.  (He also sent us home with a beer can chicken rack, which we've since used with great results.)  

Not to be outdone, Uncle Joe exposed us to the ultimate Maryland culinary tradition:  crabs.  At a local place known for them, we sat down to an impressive heap of the critters, steamed in a generous coat of the local spice mix, Old Bay.  (Evidently, you can't call something a Maryland crab cake unless it's seasoned with the stuff.  We came home with two big boxes.)  Once armed with pints of beer, wooden mallets and a large stack of napkins, Joe showed us how best to pry the crabs open and pick out their meat.  Great fun.  (Another night, we went upscale on the cuisine.  To be related in an upcoming blog on the most memorable food of the trip.)


On a map, Baltimore seems so close to the capital as to be just a suburb of D.C.  I had few expectations.  The visit was for family, sightseeing was icing on the cake.  The reality?  There's more than enough to see here to make it a destination in its own right.  I see what Marian loves about the place.