In honor of the Orioles making the playoffs for the first time since 2016, some words on visiting Baltimore.

I realized that while we visit my parental units in Baltimore almost every summer, I don’t think I’ve ever posted about some of my favorite things to do there. So today: some highlights from recent trips to Baltimore! (Okay, and also this is an excuse to show off some of my favorite recent photos of the city.)

Baltimore has a ton of museums – and some weird, interesting, unique ones, especially: the B&O Railroad Museum, the Babe Ruth Museum, the Poe House, the Baltimore Streetcar Museum, the American Visionary Art Museum.

But the two crown jewels are the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Gallery. The BMA is home to the Cone Collection, which contains more than 1000 works by Matisse (as well as many other modern artists including Gaugain, Picasso, and Degas) – the largest public holding of Matisse’s work in the world. The Walters is home to an enourmously wide collection that focuses largely on international art – their Egyptian and Asian collections are world-renowned.

You can’t visit Baltimore without a trip to the Inner Harbor, if you’ve never been there before. Home to some tall ships, the Maryland Science Center, and the National Aquarium, it’s an easy way to spend a day. The Aquarium is one of the finest in the country. I mean. Look at that fish and that frog and that jellyfish.

Plan to spend a whole day here, or maybe just a morning and an afternoon, because the Harbor is walking distance from …

… Camden Yards, Officially Oriole Park at Camden Yards (no dumb corporate names for the prettiest park in baseball!), better known to natives as Camden or the Yard, home to the sometimes hapless, always loveable Baltimore Orioles of the MLB, Camden is a Baltimore can’t miss. Grab some pit barbeque from Boog’s BBQ in right field (owned by Orioles great Boog Powell, who used to be a fixture signing autographs after you got your food – age has cut Boog’s time at the park way down) or some crab dip fries in the upper deck, and settle in to watch one of the best teams in baseball (this year, so far, at least) play in the loveliest, most unique setting in professional sports. The Yankees don’t have an old train warehouse in right field.

While you’re in the neighborhood, there’s also the Babe Ruth Museum – the Babe was born and raised primarily in Baltimore.

Mt Vernon – the Charles Street corridor near the Walters – is one of my favorite neighborhoods to photograph. It’s home to the main branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, one of the oldest free public libraries in the country and also the first disability accessible library (all them Carnegie libraries? Stairs). It’s a fabulous library but also a gorgeous building with a beautiful children’s library complete with koi fountain in the basement. The Baltimore Basilica, the first Catholic Church in the US, is across the street. The Maryland Literary Society hosts a walking tour of literary sites in the neighborhood.

If you like your literature particularly macabre, you can visit the Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum – Poe lived in Baltimore for a time and is buried there (you can also visit his grave).

Some places I don’t have photos of but I love or recommend regardless:

Druid Hill Park and specifically the Baltimore Zoo and the Rawlings Conservatory.

Two great National Parks sites in Baltimore: Fort McHenry, where our totally unsingable racist national anthem was written (but it’s a really cool site), and Hampton Mansion NPS (home to the Ridgely family for many years, located in Towson just north of the city line).

Baltimore has tons of public art; I recommend checking out Murals of Baltimore on Insta if that’s your thing. There’s also Graffiti Alley.

Food is a personal thing so no specific recommendations but I love The Baltimore Foodie and Baltimore Food Scene on Insta.

I haven’t lived in Baltimore full time since I was 18, but in introducing Travis to the city, I have fallen in love with it all over again. Baltimore makes the news a lot and often for unhappy reasons, and it’s true that city has many problems, a lot of which are fundamental problems caused by fundamental problems with our country, but despite that, it’s a vibrant, fascinating city that’s well worth a visit.