Good Morning Baltimore

We woke up on Sunday morning and drove to Baltimore. Neither of us have spent time in Baltimore. We were excited to visit a new city. Alison was also very excited to play the song “Good Morning Baltimore” from the musical Hairspray as we pulled into town. It seemed so apropos. 

We stayed at the the Hotel Indigo in downtown Baltimore. It was a nice boutique hotel. From our room we had great views of the city. Our hotel was only about a mile from the stadium so we decided to walk to the baseball game. We very much enjoy walking around cities - it is a great way to see and experience a new place. 

This trip worked so well because we planned it on a rare weekend when both the Nationals and Orioles were in town. We got to visit two new stadiums in one weekend. It made for an epic baseball weekend. Camden Yard is the 15th stadium we have visited. We are half way to our goal of visiting all 30 stadiums. 

We really like Camden Yards. It has the character and style of an old stadium, but it is a new stadium. We entered on Eutaw (pronounced "Utah") Street and immediately could tell it was a much more high energy than Nationals Park. The Orioles may be a terrible baseball team right now (they are already 20 games out of first place and it is only June), but they sure know how to put on a baseball game. 

Baltimore still has a mask mandate (they plan to remove it July 1) so they required everyone to wear masks to enter the stadium. Once we were inside we noticed everyone just took their masks off. We did as well. They weren't enforcing the mask rules at all beyond the gates. We were fine with that, since we are both vaccinated we don't worry about getting Covid. 

It was a great afternoon for a baseball game. It was a hot and humid day. The temperature hovered around 90 degrees. We knew it would be hot and humid so I picked our seats to specifically avoid the sun. I read that any lower level seats in the second section would be shaded. I scored some seats in section 49 located between home and third. We had shade the entire game. Many fans seemed to know this because the stadium couldn't have been more than 40% full, but the sections arounds us were packed. Having shade made the game so much more enjoyable. These seats also had an excellent view of the ballgame. 

The Orioles played the Blue Jays. They lost soundly - as I would expect. Matt Harvey started for the Orioles. He used to be a pretty good pitcher, but injuries derailed his career. The Blue Jays are a good hitting team and they chased him out of the game partway through the 4th inning. The Blue Jays had their ace on the mound - Hyun-jin Ryu and he pitched well into the 7th inning. The final score of 7-4 made it look closer than it actually ever felt. The Orioles were able to add some runs in the 8th, but never really seemed like they had a chance to win this one. One of the Orioles players - Trey Mancini did hit is 99th and 100th home runs. That was cool. 

While their ball club is not particularly good there were some fun traditions we noted during the game. One has nothing to do with the Orioles, but since the Blue Jays were in town, in addition to the US national anthem they also performed O Canada before the game. That was really nice. Orioles fans have a little tradition during the US national anthem. When the performer is singing the line" Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave" all the O's fans yell "Ohhh!!!!!!!!!!". It certainly caught Alison and I by surprise and kind of threw the performer off a little bit. He recovered nicely to finish the anthem. 

Another tradition is the mascot race. Unfortunately, the O's mascot race is digital. It was still quite eventful. The race pits hot dog condiments against each other - relish, ketchup and mustard. Going into this game relish was 0-34. It had not won a race in 2021. O's fans are suckers for an underdog (hence their fandom of the O's) so relish has achieved cult status. There were fans wearing relish inspired t-shirts. Well today was the day relish won. The stadium went wild. Easily the loudest cheers of the day came when relish crossed the finish line. Up in the upper deck there was a guy who had a giant bucket of relish dumped on his head. It was epic. It even made the news. 

After the game we continued our self-guided walking tour of Baltimore. We headed to the Baltimore Waterfront and strolled along the promenade. It was a nice area. The breeze coming off of the water felt really good. We eventually found a spot to sit and people watch for a while. 

As the afternoon turned to evening we made our way back to our hotel. We made two detours along the way. First, we went by the Battle Monument.  This monument commemorates the Battle of North Point in 1814. This battle was between the British and Americans during the War of 1812. The second point of interest was the Washington Monument at Mount Vernon Place. This is a cool park area near our hotel. The center of the park is a large tower monument with a statue of George Washington on top. In front of the tower is a monument to Lafayette. 

After our detours we headed back to our hotel. We pretty much sweated through our clothes on the way back so we showered and got cleaned up. We dressed up for dinner at The Prime Rib. The restaurant was born from their love of 1940s Hollywood style, legendary food, devoted service and timeless sophistication. This is the John Sterling's (radio play-by-play announcer for the Yankees) other favorite restaurant. It did not disappoint. It was a swanky restaurant. Our waiter, Bob, provided excellent service. He even recommended a book he is currently reading about Utah - if he would have brought it in that night he would have given us his copy. The food was exceptional. We shared a crab cake appetizer (divine) followed by main courses - local rockfish for Alison and prime rib for me with the most amazing potato skin sides (they were completely unique) and broccoli. We finished the meal with an exceptional bread pudding. It was an excellent culinary experience and a great way to end our Baltimore day. 

After dinner we headed back to our hotel. We slept a few hours before getting up ~4am to head to the airport. Fortunately, we went to the correct airport this time (our last trip to DC there was a little mix up). We were home Monday morning in time to get online and start working. It was a quick fun weekend in DC and Baltimore.