Trip to Baltimore

I decided to eat in the hotel bar this morning since my train was due to leave at 11:02 and I wanted to leave 45 minutes to get to the railway station (it's 30 minutes walk away, but I wanted to go on the subway as it's quicker with luggage)  

The location of this hotel really is superb.  I took these two photos to show the balcony at night and then again in the morning.

I'd booked  a ticket on the grandly named "Silver Star" service that runs all the way from New York to Miami, even though I was only going as far as Baltimore.  It takes in a day and a half to get all the way to southern Florida!  However, the seats are really comfortable and spacious.

The journey was delayed departing for 20 minutes or so, but that gave me time to buy an iced coffee at the station in the brand new train hall that has been added at Penn Station which is light, airy and clean!

I had intended to take the Light Rail service down to the centre of Baltimore, but Google Maps suggested I should take the Purple line of the Charm City Circulator instead - Charm City is the nickname of Baltimore.  This bus service is free and passes the railway station and dropped me two blocks from my hotel, which was very convenient.

I had to wait an hour to get into my room - I had arrived at 2pm, which is before you're supposed to be able to check-in - and then I was able to go down to the stadium for the evening's game between the St Louis Cardinals and the Baltimore Orioles.

It's about a 15 minute walk to the stadium from my hotel.  Previously, I've stayed in hotels closer to the ballpark, but it's much better being here at the Inner Harbor near most of the restaurants and tourist attractions and then walking out to the stadium.

It was "Bark at the Park" night (and again on Wednesday) with people in one of the sections permitted to bring a dog with them to the ballpark.  There were lots of dog-related entertainments in between innings.

 

The stadium was only half full, despite Baltimore being top of its division and looking strong for the play-offs.  However, getting tickets for the next series where the Tampa Bay Rays are in town was considerably harder and, in fact, not possible for Friday night as it was entirely sold-out.  So that night, I'm going to see if I can find something else to do in the evening.

Today, I also managed to book an AirBNB in Washington DC - it's about a third of the price than a hotel would have been and it's got lots of top reviews, so that should be nice.